Transcript Technology and Environment

Sustainable development
Issues Río+10:
- Water and health
- Energy and climate changes
- Poverty and commerce
- Resources and biodiversity
Economic, social development
and environmental protection:
the 3 piers interdependent and
synergic for SD
while globalization aggregates
a new dimension to problems of
environmental and sustainability
Sustainability
Production management
Demand management
alternative resources
Regulations
Processes
Products
Industrial complex
Indicators
of
ecoeficiency
Indicators of
ecodesign
and
consumption
Sensibilization
With increasing population and material standards of life, the demand of products of
humankind seems to increase by a factor of 5 or more over the next fifty years (the
task is to increase efficiency to fulfil these needs, i.e. reduce the demands, resource
consumption and impacts per service provided)
E.g. The Energy use:
Global consumption (1990)
- 5,5 Gtoe (240 Quads)
- (14 Quads of food consumed)
70% of energy is used by 25% of people; as population
doubles, if total people reaches industrialized levels: we
need 5-10 times as much energy, and pollution per unit
must go down 80-90%
(assuming the world is polluted enough now)
Factor X targets: e.g. double welfare with half impact
(factor 4), or, in general, doing the same while only
using 100/X % of resources that are currently used,
with targets for improvements to be operationalized
by appropriate strategies
economy
quality of life
use of resources
and pollution

Increasing the economy and quality of life,
while decreasing resource consumption
and pollution:


Uncoupling between a growing welfare and
the use of nature
Better economical policies, influenced by
environmental and social targets
- New ethics (socio-politic, community-individual)
- Social equity – qualitative development
- Energy efficiency and alternatives
- Responsible technologies
analysis and integrated problem solving

To identify areas for reduction, one must understand the
dissipation of materials and energy (in the form of pollutants),
and how these intersect, interact and affect natural systems



A prime concept is the study of material and energy flows and their
transformations into products, by-products and wastes throughout
industrial systems, where consumption of resources is inventoried
along with environmental releases to air, water land and biota
Educational courses may concentrate on developing skills to do
balances and trace the flows of mass and energy in processes and
products
The challenge is to minimize the overall environmental burdens
of the industrial systems that provides some `service´ to society,
by lessening the amount of waste materials and energy that are
produced and leaves the industrial complex,
subsequently impacting ecological systems
Scope of organizational
concern
Society
ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE EFFORTS AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
5
SD
Policy programs, regulations
X manufacturers
4
One manufacturer (X products)
Single product life
cycle
disposal
use
3
IE
PP
1 CP
EAc
planning manufacturing

(1&2)
(3)
The challenge: move towards
more holistic thinking and focus
on the life cycle performance
Product design (DfE)
Life cycle (LCA,LCS)
Ecolabeling (Elb)
2
manufacturing
Systems engineering
EMAS
R
use disposal
system/product life cycle
 company lifetime civilization span
Scope of temporal concern
Process oriented tools (production systems): Environmental technology, clean production (CP, narrow sense),
environmental accounting (EAc) & Pollution prevention (PP) and recycle (R), system thinking, planning process.
Product oriented tools (product systems): Ecodesign (DfE), life cycle concepts (LC), Eco-labeling (Elb).
(4&5) System levels (environmental, economic, social): Industrial ecology (meso) & Sustainable development (macro);
Company: environmental management and auditing (EMAS), Industrial complex level (system symbiosis), long term.

The systems view and the complexity of most environmental problems
require a multidisciplinary approach (ecology, engineering, economics,
law, etc), where along with the design and implementation of appropriate
technologies, changes in public policy, as well as in individual behavior,
will be necessary in order to rectify environmental impacts:
substantial activity is directed at the production levels, using tools
as LCA and LCD and utilizing strategies such as PP
 but the current approaches rely heavily on `engineered-technical
solutions´ to environmental problems; changing industrial systems
must be balanced appropriately with changes in social patterns


Sustainable development is only achievable if :
There are radical changes in our attitudes, in our institutions, and
the way we work and interact.
 Present rates of population growth, which cannot be sustained by
available resources, are brought under control.
 A safe and sustainable production pathway (particularly energy),
which still have not found, is put into effect.

Sustainable development strategies

Define sustainability scores (social, ecological, economical)
Weighting of scores (scientific, political & public perception)
Evaluate the scores to obtain indexes for specific activities

Select and implement changes:


Social-demand side:
Technical-production side
-
-
control of the population grownt
downsizing (level-quality of life)
services instead of products
Population
size
P
+
Consumption
levels
L
+
process optimization
new technologies
product design
Production
efficiency E
savings
P: number of individuals (cap)
Total effect = (P  L)  (E
L: production (GDP/capita)
E: material or energy intensity (kg or kJ per unit of economic value, GDP)
I : specific impacts (sum of environmental effects / unit of resources used)
+
Cleaner
alternatives I
innovation
 I)

Sustainability scores
Sustainability is a holistic property, i.e. amalgamates a number of requirements, sometimes in
conflict or dilemma: triple bottom line for the simultaneous pursuit of environmental, social and
economic objectives (`people, planet & profit´), while engineers are very familiar with the need
to accommodate such contradictions in design (judgements and multicriteria decision making);
this need sustainability indicators or metrics for the measurement and the selection of options
(e.g. 50 specific indicators combined in 11 composite values, normalized, where higher values
represent a more desirable outcome)
Environmental indicators
E.g.: 5 indicators based in exergy ratios (0-1)
reuse: input of used materials / total




Industrial ecology concerns on reuse of
materials:
- fuels for energy that ends in emissions (0)
- products designed for recycling (DFR)
or disassembly (DFD), durable goods (1)
efficiency on products:
resource inputs / useful outputs (0 - 1)
renewability of virgin resources:
consumption / production of ecosystem



virgin resources (0) residual materials (1)
recoverability of product after its 1st use:
usable fraction / total content of product

fossil fuels or mineral ores
(0)
consumption rate = ecosystem (1)
toxicity of emissions:
deterioration rate / emission rate

1
waste factors (0 - 1)
0.8
0.6
reuse
recoverability
efficiency
renewability
toxicity
0.4
0.2
0
Oleochemical

Petrochemical

Scores of petrochemical and
oleochemical alcohols on the
five sustainability indicators
The environmental impact index of B.Commoner
E.g.
Energy
CO2
global
Energy mix % CO2 (g/MJ)
Coal
26
95
Oil
32
74
Gas
20
59
Nuclear
5
Renewable
17
Total
60
100
Aspect
Units
Cumulative index
Population
Number of persons
(world)
Wealth
Products/population
($/person-year)
6000
6·109
Technology Resources/product
(MJ/$)
substitution
Energy. 3,6·1014 MJ/y
10
efficiency
GDP: 3,6·1013 $/y
Discharge/resource
(tCO2 /MJ)
6·10-5
CO2: 21,6·109 t/y
Impact per product (combustion)
Energy consumption in USA per sectors /
Year
Industry
1950
50%
1991

Transport
5,9 GtC /year
Cuatrillions of BTU
Residential/
commercial
Total
25%
25%
33,1
35%
30%
35%
81,5
x 1,7
x 3,0
x 3,4
x 2,5
Ref.- Sustainability process index (SPI), case study of energy production systems J.Clean.Prod. 12 (2004) 111-15
Eco-efficiency of european industries (2000) as relation of economic
production and impacts (resources and pollution)
8000
7000
Energy:
MEUR/ktoe
GH effect:
MEUR/kt CO2
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
GR SV ES UK IT EU FR DE
Certifications in eco-management ISO 14001 by 1000 enterprises
10
5
0
GR
IT
FR UK EU ES
DE SV
CO2
t/capita
developed countries
Emission factor
%
average
gC/kWh
Reduction of CO2
developing countries
Year
Efficiency (%)
It is necessary to change from a `fossilized´ to a `solar´ economy, to learn again walking smoothly
on Earth and satisfy our needs in a way more free, intelligent and flexible, for not disappearing
of the history face before the Sun ceases to bring its benefic contribution to other forms of life
more modest
Two main restrictions for developing the new renewable
energies (solar, wind):
- Competing and risks, with current short-time accountability
and investment practices (i.e. ecological economy is nedded)
- Intensity, due to dilution and space-time variability; i.e. key
issues are energy storage: with accumulators (batteries, heat),
superconductor (bobbins, transmission), hydrogen and fuel cells
The hydrogen technology and economy
H2 sources  production  transport  storage  use
Costs of H2 from
natural gas (s.refm.)
petroleum (s.refm.)
water (electrolysis)
$/
GJ
9
8
Plus delivery,
Materials,
e.g. refueling for
supply car on site
e.g. nanotubes
fullerenes
(state of the art)
The `ecological economy´


The initial premise: earth capacity is limited by available resources and
ecological thresholds (sustainability)
The big question: the expansion of economy by factor 4 to 10, that would be
necessary without control of demography and redistribution of wealth, leads to
the question of how much of this expansion could bring from the development
(efficiency- qualitative issues) or growing (devastating and unsustainable)


together with increasing efficacy and dematerializing (factor X), we need massive reductions in the
global material flows; thus, the welfare of poor or rich, would depend more on control of population,
consumption and redistribution than technical arrangements for multiplying total production factors;
while the precaution principle is acquiring some degree of consensus in approaching uncertainty
Three main challenges:




the ecological limits of scale for sustainability (the filled world, regulations)
distribution just and equitable (systems of transfer)
effective asset of resources (market mechanisms)
ecological economy can add value and provide a new vision to deal with the problem,
though coexisting with conventional disciplinary structure, which is a form necessary
and useful to address many problems; it works with the existing potentials, with new
institutions and specific environmental policies to reach objectives
The prime sustainability score: maintain the size of global economy within
the capacity of the ecosystem

The evidences of limits:



inputs
Solar
energy
the net photosynthetic product used by
human economy is 40% (terrestrial) or
25% (if including aquatic)
the climate change (where the costs of
rejecting the hypothesis if true, is much
higher than accepting it (if false)
the depletion of the ozone layer, loss of
Sources
inputs
R
e
c
Economic
Economic
subsystem y
c
subsystem
l
e
outputs
outputs
Sinks
biodiversity, soil degradation, toxics, etc
Global ecosystem (finite)
The basic equation of the problem:
throughput
Population x Consumption per capita = resource depletion + pollution
sources
The sustainable future:
sinks
qualitative improvements + total yield
Based in our abilities for conceptualization and prevision, with some doses of technological agnosticism
(support the development of sustainable technologies, but not account with them to solve all problems)

Some relevant sustainability approaches include the malthusian models,
the resource use and distributing patterns, the theory of joint evolution in
dynamic non-equilibrated systems, the structures and pluralistic thinking
of systems (linked to the re-establishment of the history and the political ecology),
the thermodynamic principles for open systems, the distortion of markets
by external costs and the efficient use of the resources throughout times
(rates of interest for current generations and futures)
Thermodynamic principles:
Transition of energy accumulated to flow resources with
analogy of "sand clock" which reflects a closed system,
1st principle and arrow of time (entropy) in physical world
The `sun´ mega-store of energy
-
Equilibrium between efficiency and potential
Analogy: the Atwood machine (pulley)
(unlimited on non-astronomic times)
limitation of the geological flow
Power
(energy/
time)
terrestrial deposits of low entropy
(limited in quantity though abundant in
flow temporally)
Decreasing rate
0% (no work)
The difference: this clock can´t be turned down !
(reversible) 100%
Efficiency (outputs/inputs)



Traditional economy focus is the efficacy, it is less credible on the equity and has
ignored sustainability issues; while ecology shows a limited institutional content.
In dealing with the `failures´ of market economy (external and future costs, open
access to resources) several policy tools can be used:
regulations: based in presumptions of innocence and favoring control measures
systems of incentives: taxes on emissions and products, penalties for pollution,
or tradeable permits guided by precaution principles and potential insurance
liabilities which translate the costs to the present where have more impact on
decisions; they favor prevention, increase the public incomings from a desirable
social target and pay per pollution involving both the producers and consumers
(who benefit from the induced impacts)
OPT IMALCONTROL
CONT ROLOF
OF
T HE
POLLUT ION
OPTIMAL
THE
POLLUTION
ecologicaldamage
damageisisevaluated
evaluatedin
in33steps
stepsof
of
ecological
analysis:
environmental analysis:
FunctionsofofBenefits
Benefitsand
and
Costs
(marginal)
Functions
Costs
(marginal)
Costsof
of
Costs
environmental
environmental
control
control
excessive
excessive
Tax
Taxper
perunit
unit emitted
emitted
(optimal)
(optimal)
Ecological
Ecological
damages
damages
inadequate
optimal
optimal
control
___________________
Changes in emissions
emissions

Environmental concentration
concentration (immission)
Environmental
(immission)

Functions of biological
biological risk
Functions
risk

Economical values
values to
to the
Economical
the relevant
relevant levels
levels of
of risk
risk
control cost is based in engineering calculations
Emissions
Emissions
With alternative systems of transferable pollution permits
this curve moves down, increasing more the optimal level
of environmental quality
(selling from companies with less to higher reduction costs)

The market mechanisms are designed for altering the structure of prizes
of current economy, to incorporate the total costs, social and ecological,
of economic agents in the long term



nevertheless, incentives don´t account for the factors of scale (sustainable)
or distribution (equitable) between individuals, regions and generations
to equalize countries and permit `free markets´ before generalized tools are
put into action, groups of nations could use `ecological tariffs´ (that convert
the commerce in sustainable)
These instruments represent parcels of an “ecological tax reform” which, as
far as taxes the impacts and uses the markets to obtain results with efficacy,
can adapt well to two of the goals of economical policies -sustainable scale
and effective assignments-, while only partially to the third -just distributionwhich requires to be supplemented then with a progressive structure of the
income taxes (as just the charges on consumption become regressive)
If we put on their place the goals of scale (sustainability) and distribution (equity)
with these tools, then we can apply the assignment methods of market to reach
them with efficacy by combining properly both approaches: the first being more
appropriate in cases of severe threats and the last for situations where scientific
uncertainty predominates
An interdisciplinary political tool for pollution control
As alternative to the purely economical founded in the marginal burdens and functions
of treatment costs, whose intersection yields one singular efficacy level; contrary, this
model recognizes 3 ranges of environmental quality criteria and appropriate measures
each:
low impact levels: discharge within legal limits without any fee (property rights)
damage area: taxes over additional units of pollution, both optimal and sufficient
to reach the highest environmental safety per unit of social cost (incentive zone)
irreversible danger: over this threshold the option to pay per pollution is replaced
by the prohibitions of any increment of emissions (regulatory enforcement area)
This triple approach could be complemented with tradeable permits systems to promote
efficacy and equity, limited by the ecological criteria, as new emitters enter the markets
Ecological damage
Zone of property rights
incentives
regulation
unsustainable
in the long term
measurable,
reduced productivity
non detectable
Quantity of emissions
Open access resources and common institutions:
Under the general system theory, the contradiction
between indivisibly of nature and the use of private
property for environmental management becomes
critical as the material consumption and population
increase; this need rules to avoid over-exploitation
of sources and sinks by multiple users (planning)
The distortion of markets by external costs
Price
external cost
+
supply
Sustainability and theory of games
In this simplified game the "optimal" strategy is quite simple,
as we could only play one time (so, can´t set probabilities to
distinct results) and given the value in play we must choose
the maximum of all minimum results (MaxMin policy)
demand
Production
Real states of the world
Payoff matrix
of results
Technological
policies
The optimists The skeptics
are true
are true
Optimistic
High
Disaster
Skeptical
Moderate
Sustainable


One evidence is that none single-dimension parameter (as the GDP sum)
is an adequate measure of the social welfare
There are other like the sustainable economical welfare index (IBES) that
is based in production and use,
by adjusting the sustainability of this consumption,
the negative impacts on the natural capital,
the distribution along income groups
and other reasonable settings;
though not a perfect measure of welfare yet (the end)
and assuming still correlated with consumption (the way)
Needs
Wants
(or true desires)
(or with we resign)
pride
a luxury car
serenity
drugs
health
medicaments
human joy
GDP
permanent
prosperity
unsustainable
growth
The new dimensions of globalization
Just prices: new tariffs must protect more efficient
domestic policies -which incorporate external costsand not ineffective industries within free markets
Distribution: in such one way that salaries could be
equalized globally to acceptable level with limits of
population and scale (to avoid social dumping)
Communities: federations vs a cosmopolitan only
world of free monetary managers, constituting one
coalition of short term interests to the detriment of
macroeconomy, while the free commerce converts
the different local restrictions in global aggregates
The communities with some autonomy against the strong external forces of globalization
and commerce are more prone to develop institutions which can sustain transfer of goods.
States as basic community units where policies are still considered as `commons´, are the
only existing alternatives against the whishes of transnational powers to take command;
e.g. the same legitimacy that is invoked to restrict human immigration is extensible to the
migrations of capital for countries which don´t want to suffer this "overpopulation".
And while we need to control the demography and consumption per capita globally, it is
evident that the `South´ must focus on the first and the `North´ on the second, following a
mutual win-win strategy.
On the other hand, specialization makes communication and perception of the problems
more difficult, and increases social distances reducing shared experiences and forms of
watching the globe: this history started with one world of farmers `generalists´ and ends
with other of academics distanced by their own disciplines, bankers with an incredible
international camaraderie, specialists in communications which don´t care too much on the
contents of the messages, engineers believing that physics can be used to eliminate the
ecological and social problems, etc