Cleaner Production Letters最新文献

Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change. Here we study the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO₂). To this end, we present a model that extrapolates observed growth in millionaire numbers (1990–2020) and associated changes in emissions to 2050. Our findings suggest that the share of US$₂₀₂₀-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO₂. This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget, and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C. Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely, as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize. To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.

Climate change mitigation is at the core of the preoccupations of governments worldwide. The main research gap is that little is known about a powerful tool used by corporations to address climate change, namely carbon reduction and energy transition targets. In the official statistics, companies are designated as the biggest polluters. The purpose of this research is to investigate the targets set by the largest European companies and their achievement status regarding the carbon reduction and energy transition process. Target setting was analyzed by reference to the pressures hypothesized by the institutional theory. To answer the research question, the targets set by the companies included in the STOXX All Europe 100 Index were extracted from various sources. Hypothesis testing was conducted on the existence of mimetic, coercive, and normative isomorphism. A new scoring system was proposed to measure the level of corporate commitment regarding carbon reduction and energy transition targets. The findings suggest that most targets are established for the short and medium term and refer to absolute emissions, some of them already achieved. All forms of isomorphism apply to the selected sample. The research has implications for policy setting, as relaxed targets may lead to greenwashing and prevent countries from meeting international strategic goals.

Urban metabolism uses the idea that cities are resource consuming systems that are supported by flows of energy and materials, and they produce goods and wastes, which generate greenhouse gas emissions both directly and indirectly. This research builds on other recent applications of input-output and ecological network analyses to urban metabolism with added value of comparing in one study both approaches across Europe and China specifically at the city scale. We use input-output (IO) and ecological network analyses (ENA) in a study of the urban metabolism of four cities, Vienna, Austria, Malmö, Sweden, Beijing and Shanghai, China. Based on economic input-output tables and environmental weighting coefficients, we create a connected network of flows between 17 economic sectors that captures the carbon emissions from transactions in a producer orientation. Ecological network analysis is conducted to identify the main sectors contributing to the direct and indirect carbon emissions in the four cities. Our results reveal these to be Transportation, Manufacturing, and Electricity production. Furthermore, we show that final demand in terms of domestic export is the highest contributor in each city, indicating that each city is a producer overall in the countries’ economies generating carbon flows that are consumed elsewhere.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) committed to reduce by 50% the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from international shipping by 2050 compared to 2008 levels. Future low-carbon fuels use in the maritime transport to curb GHG emissions can increase freight rates and affect trade, especially for commodities transported over long distances. This study performed a case study to evaluate lignocellulosic marine biofuels use in soybean trade routes from Brazil and U.S. to China, in terms of supply volumes, GHG emissions and potential increase on freight costs. This is the first attempt to assess biofuel use in a specific product trade. To this end, two scenarios and three technologies were developed for biofuels availability from 2020 to 2050. Findings reveal that Brazil benefits from higher biofuel supply and four Brazilian biofuel pathways meet total bunker fuel demand in 2050, while U.S. pathways supplied up to 24%. However, emission reduction come at significant cost increase with abatement costs reaching more than US$ 300/tCO₂e for some of the Brazilian and U.S. pathways. To reduce this cost gap, market instruments, such as carbon price of at least US$ 100/tCO₂e would be required. Nevertheless, fuel cost increase has not resulted in significant cost variation between Brazilian and U.S. vessel routes. Hence, Brazilian trade routes could keep lower freight costs than U.S. even with higher biofuel shares. This indicates that regions capable of supplying low-carbon fuels can become more competitive in their exports in a decarbonized maritime trade.

Material consumption has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the 20th century. The urban metabolism field of research is one of the fields that focuses on understanding and measuring this increase at the city level. Many studies have been carried out to calculate the material consumption at the domestic scale. But it is also important to include the non-domestic scale to account for the amount of materials extracted outside the city that were needed along the supply chains to produce the final products consumed in the city. This is referred as the material footprint, which provides a consumption-based indicator of resource use. The objective of this study was to develop a method to measure the material footprint of the cities of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire (France) and Gothenburg (Sweden), both port cities and pioneers in the implementation of urban policies targeting a circular economy. The methodology combines urban material flow analysis with multi-regional input-output database to extend the urban metabolism beyond the administrative boundaries of cities. We then calculated the absolute and per capita material footprints of the two cities and its material disaggregation. We compared these results with domestic material consumption. Further analysis of the urban material footprint was performed by spatializing the flows in the global economy to understand the extent of consumption due to cities. The results show that on average the material footprint is 2.4 times larger than the domestic material consumption in Gothenburg and 1.9 times larger in Nantes-Saint-Nazaire. A decoupling between material footprint and domestic material consumption can be observed, as the material footprints grew much faster than the domestic material consumption. Regarding the material disaggregation, the most significant category is non-metallic minerals, which weighs more than 50% on average of the total material footprint balance sheet and also increased the most. In conclusion, future work should thus better integrate material footprint, as there is a need to better understand the externalization of urban metabolism and to identify what aspects urban circular economy policies should focus on.

The relation between financial performance and sustainability in the global pension sector has been widely researched. Current research confirms that sustainable investments can have a positive influence on financial performance, but how that effect materializes is still debated. This study argues that the ambiguity concerning this positive impact is caused by a lack of integration of sustainability in organizations. This lack of integration causes the sustainability efforts to harm financial performance of the pension funds. Nevertheless, research shows that, if sustainability is integrated in the core logic of the organization, sustainability efforts do not yield lower returns. We assess the current level of sustainability integration in the Dutch pension fund sector using a multiple case study approach. Next, this study formulates the challenges related to sustainability integration in the sector, after which solutions to the specific problems are presented. Given the lack of integration, the barriers for increasing sustainability integration can be viewed as a Catch-22. First, a perceived separation is observed between the societal pressure to invest sustainably and constituents’ pressure to realize financial value. Second, pension funds are ill equipped for the complexity in sustainable investing and use a third party as investment manager, creating a dispersion of knowledge of sustainable investments and the responsibility to do so. To be able to solve the Catch-22 dilemma, greater collaboration, standardization and a sustainability vision are needed, resulting in a positive impact on sustainability and positive effects on financial return.

Environmentally sustainable design approach is characterised using design frameworks, a pre-determined set of criteria guiding designs to achieve sustainability provided in way of. green building rating tools. Recently, these green building design outcomes were criticised for lack of emphasis on human nature connectedness where biophilic design was identified as an approach that enhance nature connectedness. There is a growing trend in the building industry to incorporate biophilic design criteria into green building rating tools. However, the sustainable design approach is highly quantitative whereas biophilic design is qualitative. Hence, thorough understanding of both frameworks is required to develop a design framework overcoming the compatibility challenges. Furthermore, unlike the large volume of literature on green building rating tools, biophilic design frameworks are scarcely studied.

Therefore, the aim of this paper is to fill this gap by 1) conducting the first analysis of all the current biophilic design frameworks to explore their structure and development techniques; and 2) examining the compatibility of biophilic criteria within frameworks with typical sustainable design criteria.

The study presents a review of biophilic design frameworks identified through an extensive literature review followed by content analysis to find the development stages, techniques, and compatibility with sustainability criteria. Our analysis of seven biophilic frameworks revealed four techniques that were used to develop themes for categories, criteria, design strategies and building components. These techniques are: 1) literature synthesis, 2) framework synthesis, 3) interdisciplinary ideation, and 4) expert knowledge. Biophilic framework criteria has an average of 43% compatibility with green building rating tool criteria. It can be concluded that biophilic design is a sensory place-making approach and sustainable design is a building performance-based approach with opportunities for compatibility. The findings assist to understand the techniques in developing a biophilic design framework compatible with sustainable design approach.

An expected decline in oil revenue and a complicated global energy market present significant concerns about oil-producing countries’ intentions to move away from fossil fuels. Understanding the dynamics of these concerns, particularly in light of potential energy transitions, is crucial for future energy supply and sustainable energy discussion. Given the scarcity of research on the issue, this study examined whether an implied shift from fossil fuels to a cleaner energy state is possible for Ghana, a small oil-producing economy in sub-Saharan Africa. A two-state Markov Switching Model (MSM) was applied to a dataset covering 1980–2019. Results based on a multivariate state-dependent regression technique were documented as follows: First, the probability of transitioning from a nonrenewable energy state to a renewable energy state is 76.5%. Second, there is 80.2% chance of remaining in a renewable energy state for five years. Third, fossil fuel production undermines cleaner energy development as 1% growth in nonrenewable energy causes a 0.20% decline in renewable energy generation. Finally, trade openness and foreign direct investment promote cleaner energy growth. The study concluded that Ghana’s economy has a greater chance of transitioning from fossil fuels and an equally higher chance of realizing a cleaner energy state, despite a declining policy support for renewable energy development.

Food supply chain is gaining significant importance among international researchers and practitioners. However, food loss and waste is a global issue that significantly impacts global food security and requires more attention from all parties to find solutions to eliminate their causes. Although the amount of food loss and waste is much higher in developed countries, this paper enriches the current literature by providing insights from developing countries. The study highlighted the challenges and obstacles which hinder the capability of citrus farmers and other stakeholders to reduce food loss and waste and improve their profit in one of the Mediterranean countries. This paper aims to identify the best practices for improving the sustainable performance of citrus supply chains. For this purpose, the system dynamics approach has been used to build and simulate scenarios to improve the environmental performance of citrus production in Jordan and to observe the reflections of that on both the economic and social dimensions. Five scenarios were proposed and discussed from the sustainability perspective. The results from all scenarios showed significant improvement in 'farmers' profit by 22.4%, 15.6%, 8.6%, 30.0%, and 23.2% when hiring more workers (S1), motivating workers (S2), re-usage of crates (S3), the combination of S1 and S3 (S4), and the combination of S2 and S4 (S5), respectively. Moreover, the self-sufficiency index has been improved by 18.9% in S1, S2, S4, and S5.

The study suggests that there is a significant relationship between the number of farmworkers, pre-harvesting loss, and citrus consumption per capita. The novelty of this research lies within its quest to expand the knowledge regarding the dynamic factors influencing the sustainability of citrus supply chains in developing countries and observe the interactions between the pillars of sustainability.

The energy transition's success hinges on the effectiveness to curbing carbon emissions from hard-to-abate sectors. Hydrogen (H₂) has been proposed as the candidate vector that could be used to replace fossils in such energy-intensive industries. Despite green H₂ via solar-powered water electrolysis being a reality today, the overall defossilization of the hard-to-abate sectors by electrolytic H₂ would be unfeasible as it relies on the availability of renewable electricity. In this sense, the unbiassed photoelectrochemical water splitting (PEC), as inspired by natural photosynthesis, may be a promising alternative expected in the long term. PEC could be partly or even completely decoupled from renewable electricity and then, could produce H₂ autonomously. However, some remaining challenges still limit PEC water splitting to operate sustainably. These limitations need to be evaluated before the scaling up and implementation. A prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) has been used to elucidate a positive performance scenario in which the so-called super-green H₂, or photo-H₂, could be a sustainable alternative to electro-H₂. The study has defined future scenarios by conducting a set of sensitivity assessments, determining the figures of operating parameters such as i) the energy to produce the cell; ii) solar-to-hydrogen efficiency (STH); and iii) lifetime. These parameters have been evaluated based on two impact categories: i) Global Warming Potential (GWP); and ii) fossil Abiotic Depletion Potentials (f-ADP). The mature water electrolysis was used for benchmarking in order to elucidate the target performance in which PEC technology could be positively implemented at large-scale. Efficiencies over 10% (STH) and 7 years of lifetime are compulsory in the coming developments to achieve a positive scaling-up.