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In the early 1990s, the concept of circular economy was proposed by Pearce and Turner (1990) as a model to transform the traditional open-ended economy into an ongoing closed-loop system from a material perspective. Since then, several scholars and practitioners have adopted multiple definitions for circularity (Winans et al. 2017). After considering 114 conceptual frameworks, Kirchherr et al. (2017) define it as an economic system that substitutes product end-of-life with a set of circularity interventions.Circularity interventions are actions or processes that preserve resources inside the economy (Lieder and Rashid 2016a;Bocken et al. 2017). Such actions are based on three principles (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2013;Ghisellini et al. 2016): AbstractEnvironmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) can be applied to assess the economic and environmental implications of a transition towards a circular economy. In spite of the existence of several such applications, a systematic assessment of the opportunities and limitations of EEIOA to quantify the impacts of circularity strategies is currently missing. This article brings the current state of EEIOA-based studies for assessing circularity interventions up to date and is organised around four categories: residual waste management, closing supply chains, product lifetime extension, and resource efficiency. Our findings show that residual waste management can be modelled by increasing the amount of waste flows absorbed by the waste treatment sector. Closing supply chains can be modelled by adjusting input and output coefficients to reuse and recycling activities and specifying such actions in the EEIOA model if they are not explicitly presented. Product lifetime extension can be modelled by combining an adapted final demand with adjusted input coefficients in production. The impacts of resource efficiency can be modelled by lowering input coefficients for a given output. The major limitation we found was that most EEIOA studies are performed using monetary units, while circularity policies are usually defined in physical units. This problem affects all categories of circularity interventions, but is particularly relevant for residual waste management, due to the disconnect between the monetary and physical value of waste flows. For future research, we therefore suggest the incorporation of physical and hybrid tables in the assessment of circularity interventions when using EEIOA.

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This study shows the environmental impacts and economic performance due to agricultural trade through The Netherlands. Using the demand-driven input–output model and the database EXIOBASE (2011), we first analysed the environmental impacts and value added directly generated abroad by the agricultural sector through imported final consumption in The Netherlands; we then compared the environmental impacts and value added generated in The Netherlands by the agricultural sector due to exports to other countries. The results show that the Dutch consumption of imported agricultural products had significant greenhouse gas emissions of 19,386 kt CO2-eq, land use of 280,525 km2 and water consumption of 50,373 M.m3, while impacts in The Netherlands due to agricultural exports amounted, respectively, to 13,022 kt CO2-eq, 9282 km2 and 3339 M.m3. At the same time, we found that Dutch agricultural production had a higher value added to pressure ratio than abroad. These differences highlight the great dependency of Dutch final consumption on foreign natural resources, a significant trade imbalance for environmental impacts with relatively smaller economic benefits for countries exporting to The Netherlands. With these results, we suggest that it is of great importance that sustainability policies for the agricultural sector not only address environmental impacts domestically but also impacts and value creation abroad.

Industrial ecology tools are increasingly being used in ways that require high computational times. In the policy arena, this becomes problematic when practitioners want to live-test various alternatives in a responsive and web-based platform. In research, computational times come into play when analyzing large systems with multiple interventions or when requiring many runs for, for example, Monte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate how the computational time of a number of commonly used industrial ecology tools can be reduced significantly, potentially by multiple orders of magnitude. Our case study was the optimization of scenario calculations in Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA). Instead of recalculating the Leontief inverse after individual changes to the interindustry relations, as is done traditionally in EEIOA scenario analysis, we give formulations to find the total value of the change in the environmental indicators in one calculation step. We illustrate these novel formulations both for a simple hypothetical system and for the full EXIOBASE EEIO model. The use of explicit formulas decreases the computational time to the degree that it becomes possible to carry out these analyses in live or web-based environments. For our case study, we find an improvement of up to four orders of magnitude.

Global environmental and resource problems ask for new ways of managing the production and consumption of resources. The implementation of new paradigms, such as the circular economy, requires decision‐makers at multiple levels to make complex decisions. For this, clear analyses and modeling of scenarios are of utmost importance. Meanwhile, as the sophistication of databases and models increases so does the need for user‐friendly tools to use them. The RaMa‐Scene web platform reduces these barriers by allowing users to visualize easily diverse impacts of implementing circular‐economy interventions. This online web platform makes use of the multi‐regional environmentally extended input–output database EXIOBASE version 3 in monetary units, which has been modified to show explicit transactions of raw materials from recycling activities.

Recent non-optimistic fluctuations related to the oil price1 highlight the tendency of most of the oil companies in a cost-effective policy. The technology development is one of the key factors in the cost reduction strategy. As a consequence, the strategic scenario expected for the next future in the petroleum industry is an increase in finding new innovative technology solutions. As of today in this scenario R&D activities, besides to greatly affect the strategic technologies portfolio, could have more influence than ever on the business. However, future R&D projects could have an increasing onerousity and complexity related to greater technical and financing risks. Introduction of new assessment techniques, in particular of economic and financial evaluation, might become decisive. In this paper a new tool supporting the selection of R&D project proposals related to strategical needs, expected economical benefits and expected redditivity, is shown. This is a computerised system that supports the decision-maker in the construction of the necessary estimates following an incremental procedure. R&D project are compared and ranked on the basis of a multiattribute evaluation. The economic and financial performance is evaluated on the basis of NPV, IRR and payback; probabilistic analysis and risk assessment also is carried out. Examples of ranking of R&D project proposals from internal R&D Dpt are also presented. Introduction About 30 years ago a group of researchers working for MIT and headed by Meadows published2 the results of a study on the duration of oil and gas supply for the next decades. They reported that oil reserves could last only about 31 years and gas reserve for 38 years. That forecast should have meant that at the end of the 2002 we have no longer available oil and by the end of the 2010 all the reserves of gas should be exhausted. That evaluation brought disconcert and panic amongst investitors and management. Oil companies, but also worldwide industries, were forced to face a decreasing energetic supply scenario without having valid and effective alternatives. Fortunately, statements of Meadows' report were misleading because of the constraints utilised, not so well understood by most of the economists, such as keeping constant the discovery rate and the oil and gas consumption. Presently, these statements could be considered only the results of a good academic simulation of the reality having particular boundary condition but not at all reflected the time that came. In fact, new giant discovered over the last three decades, and many other fields exploited at low cost by using new technologies not still available at the time of Meadows' study greatly increased the reserves. As of today, fields at depth not certainly considered at that time, such as 7–8 kilometre and more, can be put easily on production. Wells, 13–14 kilometre long and at most with horizontal section, can be drilled and put on production. New fields can be discovered under the seabed with 2–3 kilometre of water depth. New technology solutions opened windows in exploiting new area at that time considered not economical, increased the productivity and the recovery factor of existing area, etc. So, the ability to develop innovative technologies in order to exploit economically area before not profitable proved fundamental. Maybe, the error done by the economists at that time was to consider the evolution of this activity and the oil business as static without further changes and destined to disappear. But the reality in its globality always is dynamic and the dreadful problem of increasing the discovery rate and the reserves has been abundantly overcome by means of the new technologies mainly due to the results of R&D efforts over the last decades. Varvelli et al.3 state we still have oil and gas reserves for about one hundred years and set the end of the oil and gas supply approximately by the next 2100. Also, in his article he indicates that much hardly we will get in this end because of other energy supply, most of them already known (such as eolic, solar, biomass, hydroelectric, geothermal, etc) and others not still known, will substitute the energy from oil and gas without seeing its exhaustion, such as happened with coal supply.