Overcoming the inadequacy of single-criterion approaches to Life Cycle Assessment

Ulgiati, Sérgio; Raugei, Marco; Bargigli, Silvia

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2005.03.022

Cited by 124 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Of course, the higher this ratio, the lower the environmental impact per unit of energy is expected since less input is used for the same output and consequently less impact is felt by the environment [24].While several authors may argue that the energy consumption and its environment burden adequacy is not straightforward, it has still some merit as an indirect environmental impact indicator [25,26] it is likely to be linked with a better economic investment since the energy content is closely-but not necessarily linearily-related to the price of a product, a process or a service. As a result, energy sources involving a better EROI should be selected in preference to others [27,28].…”

Section: The Energy Ratio: Energy Return On Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Costs of Energy Savings in Buildings: A Review

Dutil

Rousse

2012

Sustainability

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Abstract:It is often claimed that the cheapest energy is the one you do not need to produce. Nevertheless, this claim could somehow be unsubstantiated. In this article, the authors try to shed some light on this issue by using the concept of energy return on investment (EROI) as a yardstick. This choice brings semantic issues because in this paper the EROI is used in a different context than that of energy production. Indeed, while watts and negawatts share the same physical unit, they are not the same object, which brings some ambiguities in the interpretation of EROI. These are cleared by a refined definition of EROI and an adapted nomenclature. This review studies the research in the energy efficiency of building operation, which is one of the most investigated topics in energy efficiency. This study focuses on the impact of insulation and high efficiency windows as means to exemplify the concepts that are introduced. These results were normalized for climate, life time of the building, and construction material. In many cases, energy efficiency measures imply a very high EROI. Nevertheless, in some circumstances, this is not the case and it might be more profitable to produce the required energy than to try to save it.

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Section: The Energy Ratio: Energy Return On Investmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Costs of Energy Savings in Buildings: A Review

Dutil

Rousse

2012

Sustainability

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“…Exergy was used in a novel integrated approach to environmental impact assessment, appropriately named SUstainability Multicriteria Multiscale Assessment (SUMMA), aimed to overcome the inherent shortcomings of all single-criterion approaches [102]. Another new concept, agricultural productivity on ecosystem scale (APES), was defined.…”

Section: Development Of New Ecosystem Health Indices On the Basis Of mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exergy as a Tool for Ecosystem Health Assessment

Silow

Mokryy

2010

Entropy

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Abstract:Exergy is demonstrated to be a useful measurable parameter reflecting the state of the ecosystem, and allowing estimation of the severity of its anthropogenous damage. Exergy is shown to have advantages such as good theoretical basis in thermodynamics, close relation to information theory, rather high correlation with others ecosystem goal functions and relative ease of computation. Nowadays exergy is often used in ecological assessment. This paper reviews the application of exergy in ecology in the fields of ecological modeling and natural ecosystem monitoring. Special attention is paid to the use of exergy for aquatic ecosystem studies, particularly, assessment of the lake Baikal ecosystem state.

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“…energy-material-informationtime, spent in a given activity [1,3,10,[13][14][15][16][17][18]. This can be expressed in different components in different units [26,31].…”

Section: Mathematical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%