| 1. |
- 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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| 2. |
- 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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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- 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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| 6. |
- 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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| 7. |
- 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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| 8. |
- Ciroth, Andreas, et al.
(författare)
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Life cycle costing
- 2015
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Ingår i: Sustainability Assessment of Renewables-Based Products: Methods and Case Studies. - Chichester, UK : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. - 9781118933916 ; , s. 215-228
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Life cycle costing (LCC) is applied as an assessment tool to estimate the entire cost of typically large-scale assets, for example, buildings and infrastructure objects with a considerably long serviceable life. LCC needs to consider and accumulate all types of cost, and since these occur at different times they are typically discounted to a common point in time. Environmental LCC is a specific type of LCC, which was designed to be aligned with the ISO 14040 standard for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and shares some key components with Environmental LCA to allow a consistent combination of both in one assessment. Societal LCC is another type of LCC, which includes externalities and attempts to provide a holistic assessment, thereby covering both economic and environmental aspects. For renewables, aspects such as feed-in tariffs and subsidies need to be considered in an LCC model. A case study for a combined heat and power plant is used to illustrate the application of Environmental LCC.
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| 9. |
- Ekvall, Tomas, 1963
(författare)
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Attributional and consequential life cycle assessment
- 2020
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Ingår i: Sustainability Assessment at the 21st century. - : IntechOpen. ; , s. 42-62
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An attributional life cycle assessment (ALCA) estimates what share of the global environmental burdens belongs to a product. A consequential LCA (CLCA) gives an estimate of how the global environmental burdens are affected by the production and use of the product. The distinction arose to resolve debates on what input data to use in an LCA and how to deal with allocation problems. An ALCA is based on average data, and allocation is performed by partitioning environmental burdens of a process between the life cycles served by this process. A CLCA ideally uses marginal data in many parts of the life cycle and avoids allocation through system expansion. This chapter aims to discuss and clarify the key concepts. It also discusses pros and cons of different methodological options, based on criteria derived from the starting point that environmental systems analysis should contribute to reducing the negative environmental impacts of humankind or at least reduce the impacts per functional unit: the method should be feasible and generate results that are accurate, comprehensible, inspiring, and robust. The CLCA is more accurate, but ALCA has other advantages. The decision to make an ALCA or a CLCA should ideally be taken by the LCA practitioner after discussions with the client and possibly with other stakeholders and colleagues.
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| 10. |
- Ekvall, Tomas, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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Modelling material recycling in life cycle assessment: how sensitive are results to the available methods?
- 2020
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Ingår i: Handbook of the Circular Economy. - : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781788972727 ; , s. 116-136
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In open-loop recycling, material is recycled from one product into another. Life cycle assessment quantifies the environmental impacts of a single product. This requires understanding to what extent the primary production, the recycling, and the waste management activities belong to or affect the two product systems involved: the product that provides the material for recycling or the product produced from recycled material. The challenge is to identify how much each of the products contribute to the environmental benefit of recycling, i.e., to the avoided primary production and waste management. We describe and review many of the available methods for modelling material recycling and conclude that results can be very sensitive to the method adopted. More research is required to decide what method is the most accurate. There is also a trade-off between feasibility and accurate representation of the consequences of recycling. This implies that different methods can be applicable depending on the importance of the material recycling.
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