| 1. |
- Nordelöf, Anders, 1975, et al.
(författare)
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Less or different environmental impact?
- 2013
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Ingår i: Systems Perspectives on Electromobility 2013. - 9789198097313 ; , s. 60-75
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Electric and hybrid drivetrains are currently regarded as a promising technology forvehicle propulsion. They can reduce greenhouse and other exhaust gas emissionsfrom road transport. Electric drivetrains are more efficient than conventional internalcombustion engines fuelled by petrol or diesel (Chapter 5), and fully electrifiedvehicles does not give any tailpipe emissions. In addition, electric drivetrains canalso assist in decoupling the transport sector from its heavy reliance on fossilfuels. On the other hand, electric vehicles will require that more electricity isproduced and this can be done from several different energy sources with diverseenvironmental impacts. Furthermore, electric drivetrains require new advancedcomponents (Chapter 3) that result in additional, or at least different, environmentalimpacts compared to conventional vehicles.The trade-off between the benefits when operating of the vehicle and possiblenegative impacts from the production and from energy supply can be analysedusing life cycle assessment (LCA). However, LCA studies come in many shapesand diverging arguments on the utility of technology are based on them. Someadvocate the technology (using for example the well-to-wheels approach to guidegovernment promotion policies on different types of drivetrains and alternative fuel options)1 and others claim that the prospective for electric cars to reduce theenvironmental impacts of mobility is “substantially overrated”2 or that there will be“significant increases in human toxicity“.3This chapter provides an overview of the life cycle impacts of electric vehicles,with general conclusions and examples of results. We review existing researchand sort studies found in literature into categories by asking what we can learnfrom different LCA approaches. More specifically, which answers do we get fromwell-to-wheels (WTW) studies in comparison to complete LCA studies, and whatdifference does it make if a study includes a narrow or broad set of environmentalimpacts. We conclude by summarising these learnings and discuss implicationsfor a set of stakeholders identified in the area of vehicle electrification, such aspolicy makers and various branches of industry.
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| 2. |
- Adl-Zarrabi, Bijan, 1959, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainability Assessment of Infrastructure Elements with Integrated Energy Harvesting Technologies
- 2016
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Ingår i: Energy and Environment. - : Wiley. - 9781119307761 ; , s. 221-234
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The possibility of integrating energy harvesting devices into the bridge/tunnel structures along Coastal Highway Route E39 has been investigated in a feasibility study by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA). The main advantage of integrating energy conversion devices in a structural element is the reduction of costs compared to stand-alone devices. The construction could be used as a foundation, a mooring point and provide a dry environment for electrical devices. Easy access to the production site could also reduce the cost for installation, operation and maintenance. Two important challenges related to harvesting renewable energy by infrastructure elements, without concerning about the energy source, are to store it or feed the energy to the grid. In the second case, tailoring generation to demand is of critical importance. Tasks such as supply and demand management, for instance, peak hour management, what kind of storage should be used - electrical or thermal - need be solved. Furthermore, integrating energy production devices in a structure might cause negative environmental impacts and affect the life expectancy and maintenance costs of such structures. The potential environmental impacts associated with renewable technologies are the consequences for bird life or marine fauna at the fjord crossing locations, as well as noise and visual impact. Thus, a sustainability assessment should be performed in order to quantify the ecological, economical and societal impacts of the suggested alternatives.
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| 3. |
- Brynolf, Selma, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Sustainable fuels for shipping
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainable Energy Systems on Ships: Novel Technologies for Low Carbon Shipping. ; , s. 403-428
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The International Maritime Organization (IMO) aims to reduce the total annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping by at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008 and to phase them out as soon as possible. Decarbonized shipping represents a considerable challenge since the GHG emissions are estimated to increase by 2050 in several scenarios [1]. Decarbonization of shipping is important and urgent, but at the same time it is also important to make sure that other environmental impacts and sustainability concerns will not increase as a result. It is important to have a wide systems perspective when searching for solutions so that a sustainable shipping industry can be reached considering environmental, social, and economic dimensions and following the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This chapter starts by defining fuel, energy carriers, and primary energy sources in Section 9.2 followed by a description of the main primary energy sources that can be used to produce sustainable shipping fuels in Section 9.3 and potential energy carriers for ships in Section 9.4. Section 9.5 describes some of the pros and cons of different future fuels for shipping against technical, environmental, economic, and other criteria. Final reflections on how to choose future fuels are presented in Section 9.6.
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| 4. |
- Nypelö, Tiina, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Lignocellulosics and Their Use in Functional Materials and Nanotechnology
- 2020
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Ingår i: Lignocellulosics: Renewable Feedstock for (Tailored) Functional Materials and Nanotechnology. ; , s. 1-16
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Lignocelluloses originate mainly from forest resources and are traditionally utilized in paper, textiles, energy, and chemicals. The benefit of the raw material has been price, renewability, and feel, the latter mainly in hygiene products and textiles. The increase in environmental concerns has made it possible to justify the expansion of target applications made from lignocellulosics and that endeavor governs the majority of current research activities in the field. The search for new applications has led to the utilization of forest beyond the mere fibers, and those possibilities are reviewed in this chapter.
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| 5. |
- Perera, Amarasinghage Tharindu Dasun, et al.
(författare)
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Linking Neighborhoods into Sustainable Energy Systems
- 2019
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Ingår i: Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. - Singapore : Springer Singapore. - 2522-8366. ; , s. 93-110
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Improving the energy efficiency and sustainability in the urban sector plays a vital role in the energy transition. Hence, it is important to consider promising ways to design sustainable urban energy hubs linking neighborhoods into energy systems. Improving the efficiency and sustainability of urban energy infrastructure is a process with multiple steps. This chapter presents the workflow that is required to be followed in this process. A brief overview about the methods that can be used to consider urban climate, urban simulation, and energy system design are presented in this chapter highlighting the crosslinks among these topics. Finally, the chapter presents the research gaps and promising areas to conduct future research.
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| 6. |
- Andersson, Karin, 1952
(författare)
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The shipping industry and the climate
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainable Energy Systems on Ships: Novel Technologies for Low Carbon Shipping. - 9780128244715 ; , s. 3-25
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As by 2020, the past six years, including 2020, are likely to be the six warmest years on record and the global mean temperature was 1.2°C above the preindustrial level [1]. International agreements, the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris agreement (2016), has set the aim to keep a global temperature rise during this century well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The anthropogenic inflow of GHGs to the atmosphere from the shipping industry was estimated by the IMO to totally around 2.5–3% of the global emissions in 2018 (or 1076 million tonnes). This is an increase by 9.6% since the previous study in 2014. The IMO projects the future emissions to increase from 1000 Mt CO2 in 2018 to 1000 to 1500 Mt CO2 in 2050 in a “Business as Usual”, BAU, scenario. Two years after the Paris agreement, the IMO adopted a vision, followed by a plan for implementation, in which a global goal of 50% reduction in GHG emissions from shipping by 2050 compared to 2008, and a total phase-out “within this century” is stated. Action from the IMO has started with a data collection system for fuel oil consumption. Ships of >5000 gross tonnage are required to collect consumption data fuel oil use and data on transport work. The European Union has started work on emission decrease with demands on Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of CO2 emissions from large ships (>5000 tonnes) using EU ports. Also here further measures are expected. At present here are many different initiatives, internationally, from countries as well as from shipping companies and shipowners to find ways towards “zero carbon shipping”. The different regulations and incentives introduced will help on the way, but still there is a need for more strict regulations or stronger incentives. The present initiatives give a large potential to make shipping and sea transport an important player also in a carbon neutral, sustainable society.
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| 7. |
- Alänge, Sverker, 1951, et al.
(författare)
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Backcasting - What is a sustainable future and how do we reach it?
- 2014
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Ingår i: Chapter 5 in Alänge, Sverker & Lundqvist, Mats eds. (2014) Sustainable Business Development: Frameworks for Idea Evaluation and Cases of Realized Ideas, Chalmers University Press, Gothenburg. - 9789187463037 ; , s. 63-69
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This chapter is about ways of defining sustainability in an actionable way, in order to innovate and change the way products and services are being developed. The starting point is the four system conditions for sustainability developed by Holmberg (1995) and the Natural Step (a non-governmental organization). The second part of the chapter proceeds to introduce one particular proven way to introduce sustainable strategies in organizations, the ‘backcasting approach’ (Holmberg 1998; Holmberg & Robèrt 2000). The chapter ends by suggesting a combined backcasting/scenario planning approach (Alänge et al. 2007).
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| 8. |
- Boons, Frank, et al.
(författare)
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Comparing industrial symbiosis in Europe : towards a conceptual framework and research methodology
- 2015
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Ingår i: International perspectives on industrial ecology. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781781003565 - 9781781003572 ; , s. 69-88
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Industrial symbiosis (IS) continues to raise the interest of researchers and practitioners alike. Individual and haphazard attempts to increase linkages among co-located firms have been complemented by concerted efforts to stimulate the development of industrial regions with intensified resource exchanges that reduce environmental impact. Additionally, there are examples of both spontaneous and facilitated linkages between two or more firms involving flows of materials/energy waste. A striking feature of IS activities is that they are found across diverse social contexts and vary considerably in form (Lombardi et al., 2012); there are substantial differences in the ways in which IS manifests itself. Equally diverse are the activities of policy makers to stimulate such linkages. Such diversity can already be found within Europe, as became apparent in a first meeting among some of the present authors in 2009 (Isenmann and Chernykh, 2009). Researchers present there decided to create a network of European researchers on IS, with the explicit aim to develop a comparative analysis. We can thus provide insight to the relationship between the style of IS and its context and thereby the potential for policy makers in different contexts to learn from each other. Policy learning can be a tempting route to IS, but is fraught with difficulties if the influence of context is not appreciated (e.g., Wang et al., Chapter 6, this volume).
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| 9. |
- Calvo-Serrano, Raul, et al.
(författare)
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Cradle-to-gate environmental impact prediction from chemical attributes using mixed-integer programming
- 2017
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Ingår i: Computer Aided Chemical Engineering. - 1570-7946. ; , s. 1999-2004
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has recently gained widespread acceptance in green chemistry as an effective tool for quantifying the environmental impact of chemicals along their life cycle. Unfortunately, LCA studies require large amounts of data that are hard to gather in practice, a limitation that is particularly critical when assessing the complex processes and value chains present in the chemical industry. With the aim at simplifying these calculations and promoting the wider adoption of environmental principles, in this work we develop an approach that predicts the cradle-to-gate life cycle production impact of organic chemicals from attributes based on their molecular structure and thermodynamic properties. The approach presented relies on a mixed-integer programming (MIP) optimisation framework that streamlines the LCA calculations by systematically constructing multi-linear short-cut predictive models of cradle-to-gate life cycle impact. These models contain key molecular and thermodynamic attributes that are identified using binary variables. On applying our method to an LCA data set containing 83 chemicals, 17 molecular descriptors and 15 thermodynamic properties, we produced estimates for widely used metrics such as cumulative energy demand (CED), global warming potential (GWP) and Eco-indicator 99 (EI99) with relative errors within acceptable ranges considering the nature of any LCA study. Our optimisation-based streamlined LCA framework ultimately leads to simple linear models that are amenable for implementation in computer aided molecular design software, thereby opening new avenues for the inclusion of sustainability principles in the early stages of the development of new chemicals.
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| 10. |
- Carpejani, Pablo, et al.
(författare)
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Affordable and Clean Energy: A Study on the Advantages and Disadvantages of the Main Modalities
- 2020
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Ingår i: World Sustainability Series. - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 2199-7373 .- 2199-7381. ; , s. 615-627, s. 615-627
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to identify several renewable and clean energy sources and investigate their accessibility. The structuring of the energetic sources was outlined to display the advantages and disadvantages of their use. To do so, the literature review method and the snowball method were used as the research methodology. Previous results had determined the elements of a sample of the main existing forms of energy. Therefore, this research analysed the following sources: solar energy, wind energy, hydroelectric power, thermoelectric energy with renewable fuels, tidal energy, biogas energy, geothermal energy and hydrogen energy. The results discuss the benefits of using sustainable energies, such as being helpful to the environment, aswell as the implementation obstacles that, in this case, are stripped down to the high financial cost of initial investment. Because no previous research provided a structure to compare different energy forms, this study is expected to act as an initial guide for researchers and professionals in the field. As a limitation and recommendation for future research efforts, it is suggested to discover and verify mechanisms capable of reducing the high initial investment costs associated with sustainable energies.
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