Search results for " environmental impact"
showing 10 items of 62 documents
CLCA for Assessing Environmental Impacts of Power Sector in the GHG Policy Context
2020
Purpose: Current greenhouse gas (GHG) policy aims at reducing emissions from power sector. However, there are some known trade-offs of GHG emission reductions, in terms of other types of environmental impacts and impacts on other economic sectors. Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) has been developed to assess the environmental impacts of the power sector in relation with changes in the policy and its indirect impacts on other economic sectors. Methods: A systematic review of CLCA method is conducted in the power sector. CLCA studies since 2005 are reviewed in terms of obtained results and methodology to identify whether CLCA is a more suitable approach for assessing environmental i…
A Review on Consequential Life Cycle Assessment in the Power Sector
2020
The existing policy for greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement aims at decarbonisation of the power sector. The interrelations between the power sector and other economic sectors raise a question of whether the GHG emission reduction policy in the power sector is as effective as it is claimed. Consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) has been developed to assess the environmental impacts of any industrial/productive sector in relation with changes in the policy and its indirect impacts on other economic sectors. This review is conducted on CLCA studies in the power sector in terms of system boundaries expansion and socio-economic interactions and the ability to quantify indirect environmental imp…
Energy and environmental impacts of home automation components
2014
Life Cycle Assessment is applied to estimate the life cycle energy and environmental impacts of five components used in the home automation systems: an electricity meter, an actuator with an integrated current sensor, a web server audio/video, an interface with infrared emitter, a multimedia touch screen. For each component, the impacts related to “one unit of product” (selected as functional unit) are assessed following a “from cradle to grave” approach, including the manufacturing, operation and end-of-life steps. The results showed that the operation step gives a contribution higher than 54% on primary energy consumption and variable from about 54% to about 99% on environmental impacts, …
La sharing mobility è un approccio alla mobilità sostenibile dal punto di vista dell’impatto ambientale? Alcune considerazioni basate su un’analisi e…
2020
L'influenza della sharing mobility sulla sostenibilità ambientale non è stata ancora pienamente compresa. Da un lato la sharing mobility consente ai consumatori di assumere comportamenti che portano ad una riduzione delle emissioni di CO2 grazie, per esempio, alla minore produzione di automobili (riduzione dell’acquisto di auto) e alla riduzione dei chilometri percorsi dalle auto (condivisione della corsa e maggiore tasso di occupanti per veicolo). D'altra parte, l'implementazione della sharing mobility porta ad effettuare un numero maggiore di viaggi in automobile. Infatti, un certo numero di chilometri che vengono percorsi oggi dalle auto condivise, erano percorsi prima con mezzi di trasp…
A Comparison of Solar and Conventional Pavements Via Life Cycle Assessment
2023
The sustainable and green development of roads is lately receiving significant attention. As a multi-functional road capable of both accommodating traffic loads and generating clean energy, solar pavements exhibit a strategic opportunity for the future path of development in the road engineering. Although solar pavements have significant environmental benefits during their operation, they can lead to increased carbon emissions during the process of material preparation, construction, maintenance, etc. Therefore, it is essential to implement the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to investigate their potential environmental impacts and/or benefits. Hence, this paper systematically anal…
Environmental modelling of aluminium based components manufacturing routes: Additive manufacturing versus machining versus forming
2018
Abstract Additive Manufacturing represents, by now, a viable alternative for metal-based components production. Therefore the designer, often, has to select among three options at process design stage: subtractive, mass conserving, and additive approaches. The selection of a given process, besides affecting the manufacturing step impact, influences significantly the impact related to the material production step. If the process enables a part weight reduction (as the Additive Manufacturing approaches do) even the use phase is affected by the manufacturing approach selection. The present research provides a comprehensive environmental manufacturing approaches comparison for components made o…
A methodology for the environmental comparison of metal shaping technologies: an in-depth analysis on recycling related issues
2015
The reduction of CO2 emissions is an urgent objective to pursue. The scientific and the industrial world have gathered such challenge, starting to find out energy- and resource-efficient manufacturing strategies. From the literature review, in the domain of environmental impact analysis of manufacturing processes, two relevant knowledge gaps can be spotted: (1) the metal forming processes (and, in particular, the bulk forming processes) are still not well documented, and (2) there is a lack of systematic and comparative studies on energy and material flows enabling the identification of environmentally-friendly manufacturing design strategies. This research offers a contribution to a better…
Il prezzo del consenso. Le compensazioni amministrative nel governo dell'ambiente e del territorio
2020
Nel governo dell’ambiente e del territorio le pubbliche amministrazioni si avvalgono spesso di misure compensative. Quando una attività economica, un piano amministrativo, un programma di sviluppo o il progetto di una infrastruttura pubblica o privata mettono a rischio il paesaggio, l’ambiente o il territorio, l’eventuale conflitto tra interessi pubblici e privati divergenti può essere composto mediante compensazioni reali o monetarie corrisposte attraverso meccanismi di scambio complessi e spesso multipolari. Tuttavia, ci si può chiedere se esse costituiscano una categoria giuridica unitaria. Inoltre, in presenza di una pluralità di semplici frammenti normativi, bisogna verificare i fondam…
Practitioners’ Perceptions of Co-Product Allocation Methods in Biorefinery Development—A Case Study of the Austrian Pulp and Paper Indust…
2022
The utilization of coproducts is a strategy that can be applied to increase the economic and environmental performance of industrial processes and thus reach an objective targeted in several environmental policies. In multi-output production processes, allocation needs to be performed to assess the products’ environmental and economic performance. It is crucial to choose an adequate allocation method, because this choice has been shown to strongly influence overall outcomes. Consequently, rash choices can lead to poor decision-making. Various ways to apply and combine allocation methods can be found in the academic literature, but it is often difficult to find sufficient guidance on how to …
LCA applied to an anaerobic digestion plant for biomethane and digestate production
2019
Nowadays it is paramount to promote bioenergy for climate protection, energy security and creation of income/jobs. In this perspective, Anaerobic Digestion (AD) for biogas and digestate production seems to be a viable way to simultaneously improve waste management while producing Renewable Energy Sources (RES). The main objective of this work is to assess the environmental impact associated with biomethane and digestate production from an AD plant as Global Warming Potential, expressed in CO2 equivalents. Therefore, a LCA was carried out for the production of biomethane ready for the injection into the Italian distribution natural gas grid. A mix from different waste sources (cattle manure …