Among all the various air pollution issues, greenhouse gases are the key environmental and global concern that the world is facing today. The European Union's project on Carbon Measurement Toolkit was developed to determine the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities of products. This kind of evaluation is important for fast growing industrial nations, especially in assessing sources of alternative energy. Life cycle assessment or LCA is used to model the following fuels delivered to Singapore: foreign conventional fuel production; biofuels from palm oil grown in neighbouring countries (with 'worst' and 'best' cases of direct land use change); and biodiesel produced from used cooking oil in Thailand. The life cycle approach used in this article is similar to the method developed by the European Union's Carbon Measurement Toolkit. The case studies involve raw material production/plantation, processing and final delivery by long-distance transportation. The investigation highlights that despite being labelled as a "green" or "carbon neutral" source of renewable energy, the actual ability of biofuels (especially those made from crops) to reduce GHGs hangs delicately on several crucial factors, namely, direct land use change.

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Water pollution in river basins has become one of the main factors in restricting regional social-economic development. Water footprint assessment at river basin level is a hot issue in the research on water for sustainable development. In this study, the grey water footprint method was introduced for domestic wastewater assessment. The approach can effectively reflect the impact of water pollution on the amount of available water resources by evaluating the degree of water pollution from the perspective of water quantity. In order to verify the approach, the region of Guangdong section of the Dongjiang River Basin (GD-DRB) was selected as a case. Based on multiple pollutants (i.e., CODCr, NH3-N, BOD5 and TP), grey water footprint of the river basin was calculated. The results showed that the grey water footprint of domestic water in the urban area of the region was higher than that in the rural area. The total amount of grey water footprint in the region was 28.41 billion m3. The main pollutants in the region were phosphorus and organic compounds.