| 1. |
- Lindfors, Axel, 1993-, et al.
(author)
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Developing biogas systems in Norrköping, Sweden : An industrial symbiosis intervention
- 2020
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In: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier. - 0959-6526 .- 1879-1786. ; 277
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Biogas systems are often multi-functional and involve several actors in different sectors, requiring these actors to collaborate closely in order to implement such systems. In this paper, a study is presented where the theory of institutional capacity building is used to guide interventions with public and private actors to facilitate the development of local biogas systems in Norrköping, Sweden. The interventions were performed in the form of a workshop series, where local actors with potential to influence biogas developments actively took part. The workshop series generated knowledge on Norrköping’s significant potential for both producing and using biogas, which was traced, in part, to its high concentration of bio-based industries and its good position as a hub for transports. The interventions also created a shared understanding that cooperation and coordination to distribute resources and knowledge about biogas, both geographically and across sectors, was critical for realizing this potential. The municipal organization was identified as an important actor for coordinating these efforts. Observations during the workshops and survey responses indicate that the interventions contributed to building institutional capacity and initiation of efforts to develop local biogas solutions. Ideas put forth in this study enable interventions to target the intangible internal capacities of emerging industrial symbiosis networks. In addition, institutional capacity building serves as a useful analytical framework capable of capturing progress within emerging networks in the short-term even when material, water or energy synergies are yet to be realized.Biogas systems are often multi-functional and involve several actors in different sectors, requiring these actors to collaborate closely in order to implement such systems. In this paper, a study is presented where the theory of institutional capacity building is used to guide interventions with public and private actors to facilitate the development of local biogas systems in Norrköping, Sweden. The interventions were performed in the form of a workshop series, where local actors with potential to influence biogas developments actively took part. The workshop series generated knowledge on Norrköping’s significant potential for both producing and using biogas, which was traced, in part, to its high concentration of bio-based industries and its good position as a hub for transports. The interventions also created a shared understanding that cooperation and coordination to distribute resources and knowledge about biogas, both geographically and across sectors, was critical for realizing this potential. The municipal organization was identified as an important actor for coordinating these efforts. Observations during the workshops and survey responses indicate that the interventions contributed to building institutional capacity and initiation of efforts to develop local biogas solutions. Ideas put forth in this study enable interventions to target the intangible internal capacities of emerging industrial symbiosis networks. In addition, institutional capacity building serves as a useful analytical framework capable of capturing progress within emerging networks in the short-term even when material, water or energy synergies are yet to be realized.
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| 2. |
- Gunaratne, Tharaka, et al.
(author)
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Guiding future research on the valorisation of shredder fine residues : A review of four decades of research
- 2020
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In: Detritus. - Padova, Italy : CISA Publisher. - 2611-4135. ; 09, s. 150-164
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Millions of tonnes of shredder fines are generated and disposed of globally, despite compelling reasons for its recovery. The absence of a review of previous literature, however, makes it difficult to understand the underlying reasons for this. Thus, this study attempts to investigate and assess what, to what extent, and in what ways shredder fines have been addressed in previous research. In doing so, guidelines are drawn for future research to facilitate the valorisation (upgrading and recovery) of shredder fines. Previous research concerning shredder fines was identified with respect to three main research topics. The material characterisation studies are predominantly confined to the occurrence of metals due to their recovery and contamination potential. The process development studies have often undertaken narrowly conceived objectives of addressing one resource opportunity or contamination problem at a time. Consequently, the full recovery (the retrieval of valuable resources and the bulk-utilisation as substitute material) potential of shredder fines has been largely overlooked. The main limitation of policy and regulation studies is the absence of in-depth knowledge on the implications of governmental waste- and resource-policies (macro-level) on actors’ incentives and capacities (micro-level) for fines valorisation, which is necessary to understand the marketability of fines-derived resources. Undertaking a systems perspective is the key to recognising not only the different aspects within the individual research topics but also the inter-relations between them. It also facilitates the internalisation of the inter-relations into topical research.
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| 3. |
- Hagman, Linda, 1991-
(author)
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Creating value from bio-residuals : Biogas solutions for biobased industries in Scandinavia
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis focuses on biogas solutions for biobased industries as substrate management or energy providers. It investigates how such solutions are set up, what factors are important for their development, the effects on society and biobased industries, and the possibility of having biogas solutions as part of a sustainability strategy for biobased industries. The thesis has its scientific foundation in industrial ecology, the resource-efficient bioeconomy, and biogas solutions. The thesis is a synthesis of six appended papers focusing on value-creation, development, strategies, and the performance of biogas solutions in biobased industries.The results show that biobased industries can gain competitiveness, improved sustainability performance, and reduced costs through biogas solutions. The development of biogas solutions for biobased industries is improved through collaboration between actors where win-win solutions are identified, and resources are recovered locally. Biogas solutions will have an important role in recovering nutrients and improving resource efficiency of biobased industrial systems. This research contributes with the knowledge to implement more biogas solutions for biobased industries in different parts of the world by pointing out, additional values provided, factors to consider for the development, and the biobased industries’ strategic interest in biogas solutions.
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| 4. |
- Lindfors, Axel, 1993-
(author)
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In what way is it sustainable? : Developing a multi-criteria method for sustainability assessment of socio-technical systems
- 2022
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Due to increasing environmental degradation, decreasing resource stocks, and growing inequality there is an urgent need for sustainable development. Many of these societal challenges are interlinked and interconnected and sustainable development represents a multi-dimensional and integrative concept to overcome them. To achieve sustainable development, system changes and the implementation of new technologies will be necessary— technologies that contribute toward solving several sustainability challenges in an integrated manner. The identification and implementation of more sustainable sociotechnical systems will require assessment methods that can encompass the meaning of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a dynamic and relative concept where what constitutes sustainability changes depending on the temporal, cultural, and technical context in which the system is introduced and on the reference used for comparison. Because of this, it is impossible to define specific technologies as universally sustainable; instead, each technology must be assessed concerning how the socio-technical systems that encompasses the technology contributes toward overcoming sustainability challenges in the context in which it is implemented. This assessment requires a method capable of encompassing the complexity, context-dependency, and value pluralism of sustainable development. In addition, the assessment method should contribute to the implementation of the most sustainable alternative to accelerate the societal transformation to sustainable development. Based on this, the thesis aimed to develop a method for sustainability assessment that could encompass the complexity, context-dependency, and value pluralism of sustainable development and which includes features that explicitly aim to facilitate the implementation of the most sustainable alternative(s). The method developed in the thesis is based on participatory multicriteria assessment. It differs from other participatory multi-criteria assessments in several ways because of its theoretical basis in soft system thinking and value pluralism. These theories have several implications for the assessment method. Some examples include: that quantitative relations between sustainability challenges in different moral value domains cannot be constructed, that there is no rigorous or dependable way to find the most sustainable alternative, and that multiple alternatives can be viewed as the most sustainable alternative because this is dependent on the values and norms of the decisionmakers. The sustainability assessment method developed in the thesis is a sixstep iterative method. The method is flexible and need not be strictly adhered to; instead, it should be adapted to the decision context it is used within. It provides decision-makers with a systematic overview of knowledge on how different relevant alternatives contribute to, or counteract, overcoming various sustainability challenges. This enables informed and rational decision-making concerning what alternatives are perceived as the most sustainable and, therefore, should be implemented. This implementation process is one that the assessment method contributes toward by, for example, including criteria for assessing feasibility in the assessment framework and recommending what type of actors to involve in the assessment process. The method builds on the idea that the purpose of sustainability assessments can never be to state if a system is sustainable or not; rather, the purpose is to state in what way a system is sustainable or not.
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| 5. |
- Lindfors, Axel, 1993-
(author)
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Sustainability Solutions : Lessons on Assessment and Facilitation
- 2020
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Sustainable development is one of the most influential visions guiding future societies. Encompassed within its vision are various domains where improvements are desirable such as, social equity, environmental degradation, climate change. In the work towards sustainable development firms, government authorities and individuals face various practical challenges tied to these sustainability domains. When facing these challenges, they may implement sustainability solutions, that is, solutions that are framed in the context of contributing to sustainable development. This thesis deals with a particular sub-set of such sustainability solutions, namely integrative and multi-functional solutions. These solutions are characterized by the ability to provide different functions through value creation within several different sustainability domains and require organisations, or units of organisations, to further integrate material, energy and informational flows in order to implement the solution. Integrative and multi-functional solutions may play an important part in the transition towards sustainable societies since the integration of material, energy and informational flows may bring with it synergistic benefits. Furthermore, the contribution of these solutions to several different sustainability domains reduces the risk of problem shifting, and it may be more cost-efficient to have one multi-functional sustainability solution than to have one for each sustainability- related challenge.However, if integration and multi-functionality are desirable characteristics of future socio-technological systems, we need ways to systematically assess them and facilitate their implementation. When it comes to the assessment, there is a need to find an assessment methodology that can handle capturing the synergistic benefits and multiple functions of such solutions. Furthermore, the methodology also has to conform to the value pluralism inherent to sustainable development. Dealing with this value pluralism when trying to assess which solution, among many, to implement can be challenging as comparative judgements have to handle potentially conflicting value orientations, goals, empirics and ontologies. As for the facilitation of their implementation, integrative and multi-functional solutions tend to be more difficult—or at least different—to implement than traditional single-minded solutions since they require traditionally separate organisations to cooperate Therefore, this thesis aims to contribute to understanding the process of implementing integrative and multi-functional solutions. Specifically the thesis explores how to select indicators for assessment, how assessments may aid decision-makers to deal with the value pluralism of sustainable development when making comparative judgements and how to strengthen the internal capacity of groups of actors to engage in collective action.Regarding the selection of indicators, the thesis suggests two different pathways. Either one may base indicator selections on stakeholder discussions, where stakeholders come to a consensus around which indicators are important to assess, or one may base indicators on operationalising pre-defined sustainability objectives: namely, sorting, contextualising and reformulating pre-defined sustainability objectives so that they fit the purpose of the assessment. A mix of both pathways is also possible, in other words, using both stakeholder discussions and the operationalisation of pre-defined sustainability objectives to motivate and justify the selection of indicators. As for how assessments may aid decision-makers, the thesis advocates for a discursive approach based on the primacy of decision support tools over decision-making tools. Meaning that the tools should support informed decisions but not make them for the decisionmaker. Here, contributions are made in the form of motivations for the discursive, qualitative approach to decision-making and exemplify how decision support tools may be designed, and a method is presented and developed that enables this kind of informed comparative judgements. This method builds on multicriteria decision analysis methodology but makes a few key contributions to the selection of indicators (mentioned previously) and to how to compare different alternatives and judge which of the alternatives is the preferred. Finally, contributions are made to the practice of facilitating integrative and multi-functional solutions through showing how the theory of institutional capacity building can be used to guide design, development and evaluation of interventions aimed at facilitating such solutions. Institutional capacity building represents the ability of groups of actors to engage in collective action, something that seems to be often needed to implement integrative and multi-functional solutions. Historically, this theory has been used to study how different events influenced the capacity of actors to engage in collective action. However, in research performed within the bounds of this thesis, the theory is expanded for use in a proactive manner, thereby contributing with insights and inspiration to others that may seek to facilitate the implementation process of integrative and multi-functional solutions.
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| 6. |
- Lindfors, Axel, 1993-, et al.
(author)
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The Nordic biogas model : Conceptualization, societal effects, and policy recommendations
- 2022
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In: City and Environment Interactions. - Oxford, United Kingdom : Elsevier. - 2590-2520. ; 15
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Because biogas systems may take many forms, utilizing different feedstock and finding different end uses for the biogas, it is becomes difficult to produce explanations, inferences, and conclusions about biogas systems in general, which is why concepts for specific types of biogas systems are needed. This paper introduces the concept of the Nordic biogas model, an urban waste-based biogas system where biogas is upgraded to biomethane and used as transport fuel and the digestate applied as biofertilizer on farmland. The Nordic biogas model has three functions, namely, renewable transport fuel production, waste management service, and biofertilizer production that all bring secondary and tertiary positive societal effects, such as reduced climate gas emissions and productivity benefits to industry. This has implications for environmental and sustainability assessment of the Nordic biogas model as the multi-functionality must be considered when choosing reference scenarios, system boundary, and indicators to use within assessments. Finally, the paper discusses policy recommendations for supporting the implementation of the Nordic biogas model. Such policy should respect the multi-functionality of the Nordic biogas model by creating coherent policy mixes that neither neglect nor over-compensate for the multi-functionality of the Nordic biogas model.
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