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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 $/ GJ natural gas (s.refm.) petroleum (s.refm.) water (electrolysis) 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 Economic Economic subsystem subsystem R e c y c 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) 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