Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (114) (remove)
Year of Publication
Document Type
- Peer-Reviewed Article (114) (remove)
Division
- Nachhaltiges Produzieren und Konsumieren (114) (remove)
The economic assessment of low-carbon energy options is the primary step towards the design of policy portfolios to foster the green energy economy. However, today these assessments often fall short of including important determinants of the overall cost-benefit balance of such options by not including indirect costs and benefits, even though these can be game-changing. This is often due to the lack of adequate methodologies.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive account of the key methodological challenges to the assessment of the multiple impacts of energy options, and an initial menu of potential solutions to address these challenges.
The paper first provides evidence for the importance of the multiple impacts of energy actions in the assessment of low-carbon options.
The paper identifies a few key challenges to the evaluation of the co-impacts of low-carbon options and demonstrates that these are more complex for co-impacts than for the direct ones. Such challenges include several layers of additionality, high context dependency, and accounting for distributional effects.
The paper continues by identifying the key challenges to the aggregation of multiple impacts including the risks of overcounting while taking into account the multitude of interactions among the various co-impacts. The paper proposes an analytical framework that can help address these and frame a systematic assessment of the multiple impacts.
Background: Global targets for reducing resource use have been set by organizations such as the International Resource Panel and the European Commission. However, these targets exist only at the macro level, e.g., for individual countries. When conducting an environmental analysis at the micro level, resource use is often neglected as an indicator. No sum parameter indicating all abiotic and biotic raw materials has been considered for life cycle assessment, as yet. In fact, life cycle assessment databases even lack some of the specific input flows required to calculate all abiotic and biotic raw materials. In contrast, the cumulative energy demand, an input-based indicator assessing the use of energy resources, is commonly used, particularly when analyzing energy-intensive product systems.
Methods: In view of this, we analyze the environmental relevance of the sum parameter abiotic and biotic raw material demand, which we call the material footprint. First, we show how abiotic and biotic raw material demand can be implemented in the Ecoinvent life cycle assessment database. Employing the adapted database, the material footprint is calculated for 12 individual datasets of chosen materials and crops. The results are compared to those of the cumulated energy demand and four selected impact categories: climate change, ozone depletion, acidification, and terrestrial eutrophication.
Results: The material footprint is generally high in the case of extracted metals and other materials where extraction is associated with a large amount of overburden. This fact can lead to different conclusions being drawn compared to common impact categories or the cumulative energy demand. However, the results show that both the range between the impacts of the different materials and the trends can be similar.
Conclusions: The material footprint is very easy to apply and calculate. It can be implemented in life cycle assessment databases with a few adaptions. Furthermore, an initial comparison with common impact indicators suggests that the material footprint can be used as an input-based indicator to evaluate the environmental burden, without the uncertainty associated with the assessment of emission-based impacts.
Resource use of wind farms in the German North Sea : the example of Alpha Ventus and Bard Offshore I
(2013)
The German government aims to obtain at least 40 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. One of the central steps to reach this target is the construction of deep sea offshore wind farms. The paper presents a material intensity analysis of the offshore wind farms "Alpha Ventus" and "Bard Offshore I" under consideration of the grid connection. An additional onshore scenario is considered for comparison. The results show that offshore wind farms have higher resource consumption than onshore farms. In general, and in respect to the resource use of other energy systems, both can be tagged as resource efficient.
The availability of life cycle inventories is one of the biggest challenges for life cycle wide environmental assessment. There are several life cycle assessment (LCA) databases providing inventory data as well as resource and emission profiles of processes for impact assessment methods like ReCiPe or IMPACT 2002+. But the use of these LCA databases for input oriented environmental assessment is very limited as they cover only a part of all relevant input flows. The paper describes current challenges when calculating the input oriented Material Input per Service Unit (MIPS) indicators based on LCA inventory data from the Ecoinvent database. Propositions are made how to address these challenges. As a conclusion, further need of research to reach a full compatibility of LCA databases and the MIPS concept is pointed out.
The need for recycling obsolete mobile phones has significantly increased with their rapidly growing worldwide production and distribution. Return and recycling rates are quite low; people tend to keep old, unused phones at home instead of returning them for recycling or further use because of a lack of knowledge and acceptance of return programmes. Thus far, individual use and recycling behavior has not shown any trend towards more sustainable patterns. Consequently, an increased awareness is needed for the high environmental and social impact throughout the whole value chain of a mobile phone - there is simply a lack of information and knowledge regarding sustainability issues around the mobile phone. A teaching material was therefore developed in a German research project, based on the concept of the ecological rucksack, presenting comprehensive information about the value chain of a mobile phone. Its application in different schools led to an increased awareness and interest among pupils for the connection between sustainability, resources and mobile phones. Based on these research results, this paper analyses young people’s knowledge of sustainability issues linked to their mobile phones and their acceptance of more sustainable behavioral patterns regarding their mobile, including return and recycling programmes.
This article analyses drivers and barriers to returning and recycling mobile phones and their consideration in existing communication and collection campaigns.
This is an important issue based on the fact that the mobile phone market is growing rapidly. In 2015 there are nearly 7 billion global mobile cellular subscriptions. This means that, at least theoretically, everyone in the world has access to mobile communication services (ITU 2015). However, the production of mobile phones is linked to an increasing use of natural resources: the "ecological rucksack" of a mobile phone is equal to about 75 kg of resources (Nordmann et al. 2015); while the global recycling rate of mobile phones is under 10 per cent (Nokia 2008, Tanskanen 2012).
In order to adress this issue, the main factors that influence return and recycling behaviour (focussing on mobile phones) will be discussed in chapter 2 of this article. The theoretical analysis is based on the norm activation model by Ellen Matthies (2005). This analysis will be complemented by empirical data and findings generated in the research project "Return and use of old mobile phones", funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy/Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, 2012-2014). To conclude, we will identify and operationalise essential components of mobile phone communication and collection campaigns, based on the theoretical approach of Matthies, literature and empirical studies, in order to develop a set of criteria for analysing and rating such communication and collection campaigns.
The results show that economic incentives as well as education and communication play a very important role in initiating more sustainable behavioural patterns in the ICT sector. The role of emotional factors is often underestimated in the development of communication activities. In summary, successful mobile phone communication and collection campaigns require a combination of several institutional, economic, social and emotional factors.
The transformative research approach of Real-World Laboratories (RWL) has recently attracted attention in German sustainability science. Some definitions and understandings have been published, but guidelines and procedural quality criteria for establishing and running a RWL are still missing. To address this gap, this article has two aims. First, it aims to derive key components of RWLs from the current discourse on RWLs and similar, but more elaborated research approaches. Second, it aims to transfer these key components into a comprehensive research practice. This practice is illustrated by the RWL process in the project "Well-being Transformation Wuppertal" (WTW).
Methodologically, the article builds on a review of RWL-related approaches for collaborative, intervention-oriented research. This includes transition management, transdisciplinary process models and action research. Based on this review, eight key components for RWLs are proposed. They position RWLs as a normatively framed approach that aims to contribute to local action for sustainable development and the empowerment of change agents. The approach uses transdisciplinary methods of knowledge integration and engages in cyclical real-world interventions within certain spatial and content-related boundaries.
The components are transferred into a flowchart, detailing process steps, aims, responsibilities and overall principles for putting RWLs into practice. Thus, a hitherto missing tool for designing and running RWLs is provided. Then, the RWL in the district of Mirke, Wuppertal, is used as an empirical example to illustrate the application of the flowchart and related key components. Consecutive discussions centre on the different roles of researchers and practitioners in the research process, as well as the relevance of an underlying theory of change for effective interventions. Finally, critical reflection, application and amendment of the proposed flowchart are encouraged
Para lograr una transición hacia el desarrollo sostenible son fundamentales la ciencia y la educación, especialmente la educación superior. Se necesitan formatos educativos para capacitar a los estudiantes en la realización de investigaciones transformadoras. Con base en la investigación transdisciplinaria y transformadora en laboratorios del mundo real y estudios del futuro, desarrollamos un módulo de aprendizaje y enseñanza integral: el Laboratorio de Innovación Transformadora (lit). El laboratorio desarrolla cinco competencias clave y tres tipos de conocimiento necesarios para impulsar innovaciones en sostenibilidad socialmente robustas. En este artículo se presentan las principales características de este formato vivencial y reflexivo, además de un manual para facilitar el laboratorio. También se comparten y discuten los aprendizajes centrales de la implementación de este formato en programas de estudio existentes a partir de dos pruebas realizadas en dos universidades alemanas.
For achieving a transition towards sustainable development, central importance is attached to science and education, and especially higher education. Suitable formats are needed for empowering students to perform transformative research. On the basis of transdisciplinary and transformative real-world laboratory research and futures studies, we develop encompassing learning and teaching module: the Transformative Innovation Lab (til). The lab builds on insights into five key competencies and three types of knowledge needed for developing socially robust sustainability innovations. In this paper, the main features of this experiential and reflexive format are presented and linked to a handbook for facilitating the lab. Central learnings for implementing the format in existing study programmes from two test runs at two German universities are shared and discussed.
Practices of urban experimentation are currently seen as a promising approach to making planning processes more collaborative and adaptive. The practices develop not only in the context of ideal-type concepts of urban experiments and urban labs but also organically in specific governance contexts. We present such an organic case in the city of Wuppertal, Germany, centred around a so-called change-maker initiative, "Utopiastadt." This initiative joined forces with the city administration and collaborated with a private property owner and the local economic development agency in an unusual planning process for the development of a central brownfield site. Ultimately, the consortium jointly published a framework concept that picked up the vision of the "Utopiastadt Campus" as an open-ended catalyst area for pilot projects and experiments on sustainability and city development. The concept was adopted by the city council and Utopiastadt purchased more than 50% of the land. In order to analyse the wider governance context and power struggles, we apply the social-constructivist theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAFs). We focused on the phases of contention and settlement, the shift in interaction forms, the role of an area development board as an internal governance unit and the influences of proximate fields, strategic action, and state facilitation on the development. We aim to demonstrate the potential of the theory of SAFs to understand a long-term urban development process and how an episode of experimentation evolved within this process. We discuss the theory's shortcomings and reflect critically on whether the process contributed to strengthening collaborative and experimental approaches in the governance of city development.