Search results for " life cycle"

Energy retrofit of a single-family house: Life cycle net energy saving and environmental benefits

2013

Abstract When a building undergoes a retrofit project, the goal of assessing energy and environmental performances of retrofit actions is a complex matter. Building and its environment are complex systems in which all sub-systems are strongly interdependent and influence the overall efficiency performance. In the following paper, starting from a literature review of building life-cycle studies, the authors highlight that there is a strong interplay among all the phases of a building life-cycle, as each one can affect one or more of the others. In detail, starting from the results of a “cradle to grave” life cycle study of an existing Mediterranean single-family house, a set of retrofit acti…

Developing a Life Cycle Management methodology for road pavements

2022

The necessity of implementing sustainability is a main challenge in our society and it is taking up also in civil engineering works sector, although the infrastructure field is still understanding how to make the Sustainability Assessment (SA) a common practice within the National Road Authorities (NRAs). This research aims at providing a specific methodology for the Life Cycle Management (LCM) of road pavements materials and activities, starting from the available ISO and EN standards, by using Life-Cycle based techniques and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), with the aim of assessing performance under the three pillars of sustainability.

Life cycle and reproductive phenology of Ruppia cirrhosa (Petagna) Grande in a southern Mediterranean shallow system

2007

Along Mediterranean coasts, highly variable shallow systems with salinities higher than in marine environment, as saltworks basins or some marginal secondary shallow environments, are widespread; shallow waters function as a dynamic buffer system between open sea and land, and aquatic macrophytes represent key species regulating fluxes of energy and matter. In these systems Ruppia species are often the dominant macrophytes, and markedly colonise shallow habitats with extended beds. Ruppia cirrhosa (Petagna) Grande, mainly found in permanent lagoons, plays a crucial role in Mediterranean hyper-haline shallow waters, being a very important primary contributor to many food webs. In the context…

Life Cycle Consumption and the Great Recession

2017

Using Italian Household Budget Survey data for the period 1997-2013, this paper estimates the life cycle profiles of consumption and cross-sectional variance in the Great Recession. The study examines age profiles for total and durable expenditure, and four subcomponents of non-durable expenditure. We document significant heterogeneity in the way the recession affects consumption and the variance within-cohorts. The crisis has entailed a fall in expenditure for the youngest cohorts, and a notable reduction of inequalities for the middle and oldest cohorts with some differences between high and low income elastic expenditure. We also found that socio-demographic factors account for a substan…

Dietary Patterns at the Individual Level through a Nutritional and Environmental Approach: The Case Study of a School Canteen

2022

The public catering sector has important responsibilities in seeking a change toward more sustainable choices for many aspects related to the environmental impacts of their services. The environmental impact of production processes can be studied through life cycle assessment (LCA), which allows a greater awareness of choices and has rarely been applied to catering. In this work, we studied the impacts of two dishes (braised meat and cauliflower meatballs) in a school canteen, their impacts were studied using the daily energy requirement (expressed in kcal) as a functional unit. Global warming potential (GWP) and nonrenewable energy (NRE) were calculated starting from the supply of raw mate…

AN INTEGRATED MODEL TO EVALUATE TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY OF ROAD PAVEMENT

The unconditional exploitation of environmental resources, the emission of xenobiotic substances in nature and resulting pollution from the development of human activities have led, over time, to serious repercussions on the environment. Therefore these effects weigh on economic and social development. The need to deal with environmental issues and their relationship with economic development has led to the definition of sustainable development concept . The concept of sustainability combines three fundamental aspects which can not be separated, namely environmental, economic and social. The increasing sensitivity towards these socio-economic issues has driven research towards new fronts, u…

Materiali design e ambiente

2008

Il libro nasce come guida per lo sviluppo dei prodotti eco-efficienti ed è rivolto agli studenti del Corso di Laurea in Disegno Industriale. Il libro scritto con l'obiettivo di trasmettere l'importanza della prevenzione per ridurre i problemi legati agli impatti ambientali

Environmental assessment of 2030 electricity generation scenarios in Sicily: An integrated approach

2020

Abstract This paper deals with the environmental assessment of two electricity scenarios in Sicily, for 2030, characterized by a high exploitation of renewable energy sources in order to quantify the potential contribution of the local strategies in the achievement of the European climate policies and the potential improvement in the future electricity mix, compared to the current one (2014). In order to match these goals, authors integrate the Life Cycle Assessment with a scenario analysis. The future electricity mix scenarios, characterized by a share of renewables (57% for 2030-BS scenario and 51% for 2030-DS scenario) show a reduction of the greenhouse gases emissions per kWh of electri…

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…

Electric mobility in Sicily: An application to a historical archaeological site

2016

Transports should be a key focus in the close future for decarbonization efforts, if the optimistic climate change mitigation objectives to be reached by 2050 on a global scale are to be met. Choosing an emblematic and historical location in the center of Sicily as object of the study, the potential for decarbonization and the reduction of the energy and environmental impacts in the site for electric mobility is assessed, by considering electric mobility scenarios based on different shares of electricity generated through renewable energy technologies. The analysis is performed by means of a life-cycle approach, through the use of the Life Cycle Assessment methodology. A parametric analysis…