Journal of Industrial Ecology最新文献

Steel is a hard to abate energy-intensive industry that is not on track to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, as its decarbonization is costly and faces significant challenges. Despite limited fiscal capacity, there is a plan in Romania to produce low-carbon steel. We draw on a unique dataset collected by the Energy Policy Group estimating a production cost between €537 and €794 per ton of low-carbon steel. Based on this, we analyze the decarbonization of Romania's sole primary steel producer—one of the top 10 most polluting steel plants in the European Union—using a marginal shift analysis and an investment appraisal. The emissions of this steelmaker currently stand at 1.87 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of steel, and its ambition is to become carbon neutral by 2030. Our scenario analysis examines the outcomes of decarbonization under different hydrogen sourcing strategies and reveals that a 15% price premium is needed for green steel to be competitive when hydrogen is purchased externally as opposed to being produced on-site through electrolysis. Without this premium, the net present value analysis from 2030 to 2050 estimates a cumulative loss between €3.3 and €8.7 billion. These results are highly sensitive to hydrogen sourcing and electricity prices, underscoring the importance of infrastructure, price certainty, and policy support in achieving decarbonization.

Operationalizing sustainability transitions is associated with, for example, complexity-related challenges. This article describes an approach designed to facilitate handling such challenges, including compilation of the different perspectives of actors and facilitating analysis of interactions between interventions, in a manner suitable for integration of results in policy development contexts. Building on systems thinking and understanding of transitions, it is designed to support dialogue on (i) problems motivating policy interventions to enable a desired shift, (ii) priority areas for interventions, (iii) possible paths toward enabling transitions including interactions between priority areas for interventions, as well as (iv) chains of reasoning for policy interventions. The approach was piloted to explore how shifts toward sustainable circulation of materials in Swedish transportation infrastructure could be enabled. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect actors’ assumptions on system failures as well as drivers and possible interventions, supported by the system failures framework of Weber and Rohracher. Seven priority areas for interventions were suggested. A causal loop diagram as well as a simplified version here referred to as “transition logics” were then prepared and used to explore paths toward enabling the desired shift, including possible near-term priorities considering interactions between suggested priority areas for interventions. The causal loop diagram was also used as a basis to develop a chain of reasoning for policy interventions. Results shall be seen as a basis for further dialogue and analysis. Finally, possibilities for further development of the approach are also discussed.

Building stock modeling is a vital tool for assessing material inventories in buildings, playing a critical role in promoting a circular economy, facilitating waste management, and supporting socio-economic analyses. However, a major challenge in building stock modeling lies in achieving accurate component-level assessments, as current approaches primarily rely on archetype-based statistical data, which often lack precision. Addressing this challenge requires scalable methods for estimating the dimensions of interior components across large building stocks. In this study, we introduce the UKResi dataset, a novel dataset containing 2000 residential houses in the United Kingdom, designed to predict interior wall systems and room-level spatial configurations using exterior building features. Benchmark experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves high predictive performance, with an $�R^2$ score of 0.829 for interior wall length and up to 0.880 for bedroom counts, 0.792 for lounge counts, and 0.943 for the kitchen counts. Contributions of this work also include the introduction of a multi-modal approach into the field of building stock modeling, integrating exterior features and facade imagery. Furthermore, we analyze the driving factors influencing wall length and room predictions using permutation importance and SHapley Additive exPlanations values, providing insights into feature contributions, especially facade opening information being a critical driving factor of modeling interior features. The UKResi dataset serves as a foundation for future component-level building stock modeling, offering a scalable and data-driven solution to assess building interiors. This advancement holds significant potential for improving material inventory assessments, enabling more accurate resource recovery, and supporting sustainable urban planning.

Residential buildings in Japan have shorter lifespans than those in other countries. Although it is customary for residential buildings to lose value in the real estate market when they exceed their statutory lifetimes, this rapid reconstruction cycle poses an environmental burden. However, increasing the proportion of new housing units built according to strict energy-saving standards could have a positive environmental impact. Research on the economic lifetime of buildings remains insufficient, and the trade-offs between the impact of demand in the national housing stock on CO₂ emissions and the impact of reconstruction on CO₂ emissions throughout an economic lifetime remain under-researched. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of the economic lifetime of Japanese detached wooden residential buildings on CO₂ emissions during the construction and use phases. Specifically, it estimates the economic lifetime of detached wooden residential buildings based on real estate transaction data and assesses the effects of changes in CO₂ emissions during the construction and use phases by altering the average lifetime. The results display that a shorter economic lifetime of residential buildings significantly contributes to increased CO₂ emissions, whereas gradual lifespan increases contribute to a decrease, thereby making a strong case for reassessing the statutory useful life of residential buildings. This study provides evidence that maintaining the economic lifetime of buildings and transitioning to ambitious extensions are crucial aspects of environmental policies

Recent circular economy (CE) literature has examined the opportunities and limitations of business case logics, yet this area remains under-theorized. This article contributes to the emerging debate by drawing on the stakeholder business case for sustainability from corporate sustainability literature, emphasizing the role of stakeholder collaboration in addressing sustainability challenges. By adopting the ordonomic approach from business ethics, we (re-)conceptualize the stakeholder business case for CE, focusing on the dynamic interplay between profit motives and stakeholder collaboration. This article makes three key contributions. First, it bridges the gap between theoretical business case logics and CE practices, demonstrating how innovative stakeholder governance can foster incentive- and system-compatible CE integration. Second, it contends that successful CE practices demand a comprehensive, system-level approach that actively involves all stakeholders. It underscores the importance of broad stakeholder engagement in business case development and illustrates how such collaboration harmonizes individual and collective interests within a CE. Third, it expands the stakeholder business case for sustainability by introducing a conceptual distinction between stakeholders’ semantics, governance, and optimization. This distinction offers new opportunities to reconcile profit orientation with environmental stewardship, advancing the societal transition to a functional CE.

Nowadays, hardwood in Germany is mainly used for heat production despite several available or developed material applications. However, questions arise about how hardwood can be used in the future to best meet its environmental reduction potential, including consequences through replacing non-renewable energy carriers or products.

A prospective, consequential life cycle assessment was conducted for the additional hardwood harvest in a regional case study in Germany. The study included conventional wood products (such as glued-laminated beams, viscose fibers, and particle boards) and emerging products like lignin-based carbon fibers and phenol, as well as their respective substitutes.

Results showed that shifting hardwood to material applications reduced environmental impacts when the heat was generated via heat pumps. The production of viscose and carbon fibers can lead to great reductions if the chosen substitutes are effectively replaced. The glulam beam production reduces most environmental impacts to a smaller extent, but depends less on the product replaced. Lignin-based phenol and particle board production lead to few environmental consequences.

Future hardwood use for material applications can reduce environmental impacts if heat pumps are used for heat generation and the substitution is effective. Some applications may not achieve significant reductions due to quality issues or limited production output. Hardwood might also be required to compensate for the decline in softwood supply, achieving negligible environmental consequences.

Future research should focus on flexible processing for mixed hardwood species and its effective substitution of non-wood products.

Palladium, essential in manufacturing industries and sustainable development, faces supply stability threats due to its concentrated geographical distribution and global supply–demand mismatch. This study employs complex network analysis and the cascading failure model to assess the supply chain security of the global palladium trade network during 1990–2023. The results show that the network structure is shaped by multiple factors including geopolitics, economic climates, and industrial technology. A notable decrease in the concentration of palladium supply has been observed, with higher network densities, average clustering coefficients, and shorter path lengths indicating the network's enhanced aggregation, transmission efficiency and overall resistance ability to risks. However, the recent intensification of global geopolitical situations has led to a trend of reconfiguration and isolation, progressively partitioning the network into communities of North America, Western Europe, and Russia-East Asia, while elevating the geographical proximity as a crucial factor in trade. Despite the fact that Russia and South Africa, as major producers and suppliers of palladium, play significant roles in the spreading of supply chain crises, the central status of the network remains dominated by palladium consumers and transit countries. The risk matrix assessment demonstrates that supply risks have declined more substantially than vulnerabilities, revealing that the improvements in palladium's supply chain security are more dependent on mitigating the severity of a potential supply disruption rather than its likelihood. This study serves to integrate the dynamic perspective of crisis propagation into the evaluation of supply chain security, approaching a scenario closer to reality.

Due to increasing market demand and limited resources for utilization and allocation, the global economy faces mounting pressure. Construction and demolition waste (C&DW) is therefore considered a potentially significant source of secondary materials for the future. To prolong the service time of these end-of-use products within the construction sector, innovative business models for effectively utilizing these urban mines are emerging, with direct reuse strategies being one practical solution. Among various types of C&DW, the inherent properties of steel make it particularly favorable for direct reuse. This study develops a hybrid input–output analysis and environmental extended input–output analysis model to assess the economic and environmental impact of applying a direct reuse strategy in the construction sector, with a focus on end-of-use structural steel products from end-of-service buildings. Under the scenario that end-of-use structural steel is directly reused, the economy may experience slight output value losses owing to reduced demand for raw material and remanufacturing sectors. However, it can result in significant carbon reduction impacts on energy and raw material sectors. Moreover, the carbon reduction achieved through the direct reuse strategy is around 25% of that achieved by transitioning from blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) steelmaking process to direct reduced iron-electric arc furnace (DRI-EAF) steelmaking process. These findings indicate that the innovative direct reuse business strategy could effectively serve as a catalyst for reducing carbon emissions across the entire economy.

Lithium-ion batteries are essential for consumer electronics, stationary storage systems, and especially, electromobility, but are expensive and have a substantial environmental footprint. To improve the sustainability and cost-effectiveness of batteries, innovative battery design and production processes across the entire value chain are currently under development. Life cycle assessment and cost analysis can help support such developments by providing direct feedback and optimizing technical decisions from an economic and environmental point of view. Batteries and their production, however, are complex and characterized by many technical parameters that influence their performance. Current sustainability assessment models lack the engineering refinement to capture the influence of relevant parameters and simulate battery manufacturing processes that are useful for technical decision-making. In this work, a new Python-based modeling platform for technical, environmental, and economic assessments of batteries is presented. The platform aims to offer decision support in different use cases from optimization of specific parameters to broader strategic analysis. Furthermore, due to its flexible and modular structure, models of new battery technologies, machines, and process routes can be easily integrated in the framework. After describing the platform structure and models, the capabilities are illustrated by performing an environmental and economic assessment considering different battery chemistries and material sourcing strategies following the plans for a planned gigafactory in France. The results highlight the potential of the platform to become a powerful tool for future development of batteries from a research, industrial, and policy-making perspective.