Search results for " environmental impacts"
showing 10 items of 25 documents
The energy and environmental impacts of Italian households consumptions: An input–output approach
2011
Abstract Promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns is a key challenge for the future, in order to use the Earth resources efficiently, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, and to decouple the economic growth from the environmental degradation. New or customized methods have to be applied to support decisions makers in the choice of environmental-friendly products, and to select policy priorities and sustainable strategies. A modified input–output model can aid to analyse the relationships among economic growth, energy consumptions and pollutants, in order to assess the energy and environmental impacts due to the actual production and consumption patterns. The following pa…
Life Cycle Assessment of Flow-Redox Cells: A Case Study
2022
European Union identified the battery value chain as strategic for achieving a sustainable and decarbonized economy. Focusing on the environmental sustainability of batteries, this paper presents an application of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology to three flow-redox cells characterized by electrodes made by different materials. The results are referred to one kWh of energy supplied by the cell during its useful life and are calculated following a “from cradle to grave” approach. Negligible differences (lower than 1.5%) are observed in the energy and environmental impacts of the three types of cells, mainly due to the type of electrode and the use phase. A dominance analysis shows that …
Presentazione del progetto, analisi dei risultati e valutazione dei fattori critici di successo.
2010
Life Cycle Assessment of olive oil: a case study in Southern Italy
2018
The paper describes the results of a specific LCA based analysis of the production of oil in the region of Calabria, in southern Italy. The goal of the study is to assess the energy and environmental impacts of different scenarios involving conventional and organic cultivations, plains and hills cultivations and involving different operating techniques. The study also aims at assessing the share of each life cycle step on the total of energy and environmental impacts. The functional unit chosen for the comparative analysis is a glass bottle of 0.75 l of extra-vergine oil. A “from cradle to gate” perspective was chosen. The analysis was developed according to the LCA standards of the ISO 140…
A new sustainable food delivery platform
2022
In recent years, the food delivery business has expanded with great success and during the last months, pandemic have contributed to the growth of online food delivery. Consequently, with this fast growth of the online food delivery commerce, it’s important to analyze its environmental effects. In fact, the downside is represented by the enormous volume of waste produced by this market, consisting of packaging mostly made with materials such as paper, cardboard, plastic, and aluminum; a problem which, in relation to the volume of orders and the limits of separate collection that is not always efficient, leads to a quantity of unmanaged waste. This study aims to assess the impact of urban fo…
Multicriteria-Oriented Optimization of Building Energy Performances: The Annex 72 IEA-EBC Experience
2021
International audience; This chapter describes the research experience of the International Energy Agency-Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme Annex 72 members on the application of multi-objective optimization processes for the selection of design or retrofit actions that allow for improving different aspects (energy, environmental, economic, etc.) of buildings in a life cycle perspective. Thirteen case studies were examined focussing on methodologies, applications and results and deriving generic conclusions and guidelines for building designers and decision-makers.
Towards an integrated design of renewable electricity generation and storage systems for NZEB use: A parametric analysis
2021
Abstract Although nearly zero energy buildings have attracted growing research attention, literature analysis shows that only a limited number of researches try to couple load match/grid interaction issues and environmental impacts in early design stages. The study proposes a novel multidisciplinary design approach that allows to integrate these two conflicting aspects aiming to find trade-offs. The proposed approach has been applied to a building case study, equipped with a photovoltaics system without energy storage. The results show that even though on yearly basis the energy use (5,290 kWhe) is largely overcome by the on-site energy generation (8069 kWhe), an oversized PV system alone m…
Infrastructure, Tariff and Legal Action: How to Achieve a Climate-Friendly Transport System
2011
Transportation absorbs about 70% of oil consumption in EU countries. The fuels that burn in the field of transport are composed of 96% of oil. Energy efficiency of road and air traffic must also be improved. But transport environmental impacts reductions should be made necessarily through a transfer of traffic from the car, lorries and aircraft to train, ship, and non motorized two-wheelers into the EU cities. In fact the former are large producers of greenhouse gases, while the latter are more environmentally friendly means of transport in climate. Reaching an annual increase of 1% of the modal split in favour of more sustainable means of transport on the environment must be set as a goal …
From biomass waste to tri-generation: a life-cycle experience in the “agro-combined” of Thibar
2018
The paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment of the energy tri-generation from biomass waste in a plant located in Tunisia. The analysis included the plant construction and end-of-life, the supply of biomass, its use for biogas production and the electricity, heating and cooling generation from biogas. The study is one of the first applications of environmental analysis to tri-generation from biomass waste in developing countries. The results showed that the plant construction is responsible of 76% of primary energy consumption and gives a contribution higher than 88% on resource depletion and ionising radiation. The operation causes 66% of the impact on human toxicity - cancer effects and mo…
Life Cycle Assessment of solar heating and cooling systems: the tool “ELISA”
2018
Solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems play an important role in the achievement of energy and climate European goals. The benefits of these technologies should be evaluated taking into account their lifecycle energy and environmental impacts, calculated by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The development of a complete LCA can be difficult and time-consuming particularly for no-LCA experts, discouraging them in the inclusion of the lifecycle perspective in their assessments. To overcome this limit, the paper presents “ELISA - Environmental Lifecycle Impacts of Solar Air-conditioning systems”, a user-friendly simplified tool for estimating the lifecycle energy and envir…