Assessing the capacity of local ecosystems to meet industrial demand for ecosystem services

Gopalakrishnan, Varsha; Bakshi, Bhavik R.; Ziv, Guy

doi:10.1002/aic.15340

Cited by 35 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Similar results are also obtained for other manufacturing sites (Gopalakrishnan et al. ). Reforestation also provides additional remediation to other air pollutants, but the benefits are not so significant, as shown by in the supporting information on the Web.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

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Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment while Encouraging Techno‐Ecological Synergies

Liu

Bakshi

2018

J of Industrial Ecology

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Life cycle assessment (LCA) has enabled consideration of environmental impacts beyond the narrow boundary of traditional engineering methods. This reduces the chance of shifting impacts outside the system boundary. However, sustainability also requires that supporting ecosystems are not adversely affected and remain capable of providing goods and services for supporting human activities. Conventional LCA does not account for this role of nature, and its metrics are best for comparing alternatives. These relative metrics do not provide information about absolute environmental sustainability, which requires comparison between the demand and supply of ecosystem services (ES). Technoecological synergy (TES) is a framework to account for ES, and has been demonstrated by application to systems such as buildings and manufacturing activities that have narrow system boundaries.This article develops an approach for techno-ecological synergy in life cycle assessment (TES-LCA) by expanding the steps in conventional LCA to incorporate the demand and supply of ecosystem goods and services at multiple spatial scales. This enables calculation of absolute environmental sustainability metrics, and helps identify opportunities for improving a life cycle not just by reducing impacts, but also by restoring and protecting ecosystems. TES-LCA of a biofuel life cycle demonstrates this approach by considering the ES of carbon sequestration, air quality regulation, and water provisioning. Results show that for the carbon sequestration ecosystem service, farming can be locally sustainable but unsustainable at the global or serviceshed scale. Air quality regulation is unsustainable at all scales, while water provisioning is sustainable at all scales for this study in the eastern part of the United States. Keywords:biofuel ecosystem services environmental metrics industrial ecology life cycle assessment (LCA) sustainability assessment Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Most of the work on TES so far has been on assessing and designing TES at the scale of individual systems such as a residence (Urban and Bakshi ) or manufacturing site (Gopalakrishnan et al. ; Martinez‐Hernandez et al. ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment while Encouraging Techno‐Ecological Synergies

Liu

Bakshi

2018

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…Urban and Bakshi 27 applied the TES framework for designing a residential system at the local and life-cycle scales along with the supporting ecosystem services. Previous work by Gopalakrishnan et al 29 includes application of the TES framework to evaluate the ability of local ecosystems to meet the demand for some ecosystem services demanded by a biodiesel process with on-site power generation. Previous work by Gopalakrishnan et al 29 includes application of the TES framework to evaluate the ability of local ecosystems to meet the demand for some ecosystem services demanded by a biodiesel process with on-site power generation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hanes et al 28 combined the TES framework with the Process to Planet 14 framework for designing a renewable energy production system in Central Ohio, accounting for ecosystem service supply at local and regional scales, and demand at local, regional, and national scales. Previous work by Gopalakrishnan et al 29 includes application of the TES framework to evaluate the ability of local ecosystems to meet the demand for some ecosystem services demanded by a biodiesel process with on-site power generation. Results from this study indicate that ecological systems can provide services that mitigate all criteria air pollutants while being economically feasible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecosystems as unit operations for local techno‐ecological synergy: Integrated process design with treatment wetlands

Gopalakrishnan

Bakshi

2018

AIChE Journal

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Despite the critical importance of ecological systems for sustaining all chemical and manufacturing processes, process design has kept nature outside its system boundary. Recent efforts for sustainable process design aim to reduce environmental impact, but no design method considers the capacity of ecosystems to supply the goods and services that are needed to sustain a process. Overcoming this deficiency of conventional process design is essential to transform the chemical industry into an activity that respects ecological constraints and results in a net positive societal impact. As an important step toward meeting this goal, this work expands the boundary of process design to include ecosystems as unit operations in traditional design. Similar to tasks performed by conventional unit operations, ecological processes perform ecosystem functions resulting in goods and services required by the technological system. The goal behind designing integrated techno‐ecological process flowsheets is to balance the ecosystem service demand of technological systems with the ecosystem service supply of ecological systems. Systems are optimized to balance the demand and supply subject to unit operation level constraints of technological and ecological systems, and interactions between detailed process level variables and ecological variables are explored. The Techno‐Ecological Synergy (TES) Design method is developed and applied to a biofuel production system, considering ecosystem services like water provisioning and water quality regulation provided by wetland ecosystems. Comparing the integrated TES design with conventional techno‐centric design shows that TES design can result in net positive impact manufacturing: a case where the ecosystem service supply is equal to or exceeds the demand, with little or no compromises in process profitability. These results should encourage close integration between technological and ecological systems while designing sustainable processes, and identify many challenges for developing TES of individual processes and across the life cycle. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 2390–2407, 2018

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“…Conceptualising processes in synchrony and synergy with the ecological processes has also shown significant advances, including a novel framework to develop techno-ecological synergy as a strategy for sustainable process design [47]. It is also important to ensure technologies are implemented according to the capacity of local ecosystems [48] [49]. The local scale can also facilitate more opportunities for direct synergetic interactions, which can be facilitated by a framework that explicitly captures the dynamic nature of ecosystems as well as techno-ecological interactions in locally integrated production systems [50].…”

Section: From Process To Global Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in sustainable process design—from molecular to global scales

Martínez-Hernández

2017

Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering

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Sustainability issues are changing the nature of process design problems and methods. • Design boundaries have expanded down towards molecular level and up to global scales. • Methods and decision support frameworks address multidimensionality and multiscale. • Explicit consideration of ecosystems has shown recent advancements. • Tools capturing the full range of scales and interactions are yet to be developed.

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Assessing the capacity of local ecosystems to meet industrial demand for ecosystem services

Cited by 35 publications

References 70 publications

Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment while Encouraging Techno‐Ecological Synergies

Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment while Encouraging Techno‐Ecological Synergies

Ecosystems as unit operations for local techno‐ecological synergy: Integrated process design with treatment wetlands

Trends in sustainable process design—from molecular to global scales

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