A Framework for Quantified Eco‐efficiency Analysis

Abstract

Summary Eco‐efficiency is an instrument for sustainability analysis, indicating an empirical relation in economic activities between environmental cost or value and environmental impact. This empirical relation can be matched against normative considerations as to how much environmental quality or improvement society would like to offer in exchange for economic welfare, or what the trade‐off between the economy and the environment should be if society is to realize a certain level of environmental quality. Its relevance lies in the fact that relations between economy and environment are not self‐evident, not at a micro level and not at the macro level resulting from micro‐level decisions for society as a whole. Clarifying the why and what of eco‐efficiency is a first step toward decision support on these two aspects of sustainability. With the main analytic framework established, filling in the actual economic and environmental relations requires further choices in modeling. Also, the integration of different environmental effects into a single score requires a clear definition of approach, because several partly overlapping methods exist. Some scaling problems accompany the specification of numerator and denominator, which need a solution and some standardization before eco‐efficiency analysis can become more widely used. With a method established, the final decision is how to embed it in practical decision making. In getting the details of eco‐efficiency better specified, its strengths, but also its weaknesses and limitations, need to be indicated more clearly.

Sustainable value assessment of farms using frontier efficiency benchmarks

“…A well-known definition of eco-efficiency is the ratio of created value per unit of environmental impact. In fact, this variant of eco-efficiency can be seen as environmental productivity (Huppes and Ishikawa, 2005), and is similar to the definition of productivity in economics.…”

Human and Ecological Life Cycle Tools for the Integrated Assessment of Systems (HELIAS)

“…the EMC, but also indicators of ecoefficiency (cf. Huppes and Ishikawa 2005), and so on. Thus, using several tools in combination does not necessarily lead to an increased information supply to decision-makers.…”

Eco-Efficiency Analysis of Industrial Systems in the Songhua River Basin: A Decomposition Model Approach

“…In the 1990s, the notion of eco-efficiency was developed to incorporate both resource efficiency and environmental efficiency, and was defined as the ratio of value added to environmental impact [4]. Because eco-efficiency plays an increasingly important role in ensuring efficient industrial activities with regard to the use of natural resources, that the concept has received significant attention in the literature is not surprising [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. Koskela [5] argued that eco-efficiency can be seen either as an indicator of environmental performance, or as a business strategy for sustainable development.…”

“…The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) [6] described eco-efficiency as "being concerned with creating more value with less impact." Huppes [7] held that clarifying the why and what of eco-efficiency was a first step between the relative levels of environmental damage and the values of Gross Domestic Products (GDP) per capita in a country. According to this theory, the environmental impact is an inverse U-shaped curve, in which the environment deteriorates before it improves with economic growth [27,28].…”