The Material and Energy Basis of Rome: An Investigation of Direct and Indirect Resource Use through Material Flow, Energy and Footprint Methods

Ascione, Marco; Campanella, Luigí; Cherubini, Francesco; Bargigli, Silvia; Ulgiati, Sérgio

doi:10.1002/cssc.200700017

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…It may be defined as a tool to analyse the city functionalities, assessing its environmental impacts while depicting the mutual influences among urban and rural areas ( Minx et al, 2011 ). The environmental aspects of urban metabolism are assessed by means of different tools as LCA ( Braulio-Gonzalo et al, 2015 ; Zhang, 2013 ; Baynes and Wiedmann, 2012 ; Ascione et al, 2008 ), directly contributing to the “urban quality” ( Garau and Pavan, 2018 ).…”

Section: Lca Overview For Thermal Conversion Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Renewable energy from solid waste: life cycle analysis and social welfare

Ramos

Rouboa

2020

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

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In this study, municipal solid waste (MSW) composition in distinct world locations is compared and a case study is assessed. Three waste-to-energy (WtE) techniques are employed within the framework of an industrial partnership. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and a brief social contextualization including the production of renewable energy from the waste generated worldwide were held to attain a holistic view and attract the interest of multiple stakeholders. Incineration depicted a sustainable profile with improved results for global warming potential and terrestrial ecotoxicity potential. Regular gasification revealed the best results for eutrophication, acidification, marine aquatic ecotoxicity and human toxicity potential. Two-stage plasma gasification showed negative values for all impact categories i.e. achieving environmental credits. The estimate of the electricity produced from the waste generated per capita showed a fair coverage of the electrical demand in distinct world areas. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no reports connecting the electricity use, the waste production and the renewable energy achieved from WtE for different world regions. Therefore, this study supports the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable alternatives, reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining the comfort and commodities suitable for a comfortable quality of life.

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Section: Lca Overview For Thermal Conversion Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Renewable energy from solid waste: life cycle analysis and social welfare

Ramos

Rouboa

2020

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

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“…As a consequence, a multimethod, multiscale approach named "SUMMA" (sustainability multiscale multimethod assessment [22] ), jointly based on assessing material demand, [23][24][25][26] embodied energy, [27][28][29] emergy (a measure of environmental support [30][31][32][33][34] ), and emission flows, [35][36][37] was applied to investigate the resource demand and use across space and time scales as well as to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the most important aspects of the urban system dynamics. Ascione et al [38] discuss the annual resource basis of Rome in the year 2002 based on preliminary SUMMA results. Further details about the SUMMA framework are provided as Supporting Information.…”

Section: Towards An Integrated Evaluation Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring an Urban System’s Dependence on the Environment as a Source and a Sink: The City of Rome (Italy) Across Space and Time Scales

et al. 2011

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The material, energy and environmental flows supporting the growth and welfare of the city of Rome, during a recent forty-year period (from 1962 to 2002) were investigated in order to understand the resource basis of its present welfare and lifestyle. The study focused on the local scale of the urban system (resources actually used within the system's boundary) as well as on the larger regional and national scales where resources come from. Assessing the resource use change over time allowed to understand what are the main drivers of lifestyle changes of the local population. In particular, while the direct, local-scale use of the main material and energy resources exhibits a quadratic growth over time, the total (direct+indirect) consumption on the scale of the global economy is always 3-4 times higher, is so highlighting how much of a city's growth depends on economic and production activities that develop outside of its boundaries. Water use shows an even more alarming trend, in that the indirect consumption grows much faster, suggesting a shift from the use of a less water-intensive mix of products to a different mix that requires much more water in its industrial production. Such trend calls for increased awareness of the water footprint of goods used as well as increased efficiency in water management by both industries and households. The evolution of resource use and standard of living also affects the release of airborne emissions, an issue that is becoming crucial due to concerns for climate change and urban air pollution. The extent of such additional environmental burden is also explored in the present paper.

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“…We found 50 studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that examined the environmental impact of within-country diets. The following 38 studies did not meet our inclusion criteria: (Ascione et al, 2008;Baroni et al, 2007;Berners-Lee et al, 2012;Bleken and Bakken, 1997;Browne et al, 2008;Calderón et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2010;Coley et al, 1998;Du et al, 2006;Eshel and Martin, 2006;Faist et al, 2001;Gerbens-Leenes and Nonhebel, 2005; Klein-Banai and Theis, 2011; Kok et al, 2006;Kramer et al, 1999;Kytzia et al, 2004;Li et al, 2008;Liu and Savenije, 2008;Meier and Christen, 2012;Nijdam et al, 2005;Renault and Wallender, 2000;Risku-Norja and Maenpaa, 2007;Saarinen et al, 2012;Sonesson et al, 2005;Vieux et al, 2012;Vintila, 2010;Vintila, 2010;Virtanen et al, 2011;Wallen et al, 2004;Wallgren and Höjer, 2009;Wang et al, 2011;Weber and Matthews, 2008;Xue and Landis, 2010;Zufia and Arana, 2008).…”

Section: Characteristics Of Diets In Selected Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards efficient use of resources in food systems : Exploring circular principles and strategies

Kernebeek¹

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Natural resources for food production, such as land, phosphate rock and fossil energy, are scarce. Despite their scarcity, these resources are currently inefficiently used in the food system. The objective of this thesis was to understand the combined effects of technical and consumption strategies, to reduce the use of natural resources in a food system. To this end, we first reviewed 12 life cycle assessments studies that explored various diets. We concluded that the 'daily' or 'yearly' diets instead of meals should be used to compare environmental impacts of diets. We also found that accounting for nutritional quality of the diets hardly affected our comparison of environmental impacts of diets varying in % of animal-source food. We then explored the minimum requirements of land, phosphorus (P) and energy independently to feed a human population with diets varying from 0% protein from animals (PA) (i.e. a vegan diet) to diets containing 80% PA, using an integrated food systems approach. Our material and nutrient flow model was a conceptual representation of a food system that was parameterised with crop and animal production data from the Netherlands. We assumed that there was no import and export of food and feed. While the Dutch food system is not representative of all food systems in the world, sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the principles deduced from our model results also hold for other food systems. Results indicated that land is used most efficiently if people consume ca. 12% of PA, especially from milk. The role of animals in such a land-based diet is to convert co-products from crop production and the human food industry, otherwise not used within the food system, into milk and meat. The optimal %PA in the human diet depends on population size and the relative share of land unsuitable for crop production. Recycling of human excreta showed most potential in reducing P waste, followed by prevention and finally recycling of agricultural waste. Fully recycling P reduces mineral P input by 90%. The optimal amount of animal protein in the diet depended on whether or not P waste from animal products was fully prevented or recycled: if it was fully prevented or recycled, then a small amount of animal protein in the human diet resulted in the most sustainable use of P, but if it was not fully prevented or recycled, then the most sustainable use of P results from a complete absence of animal protein in the human diet. In situations with anaerobic digestion and/or waste prevention, energy input continuously increased with increasing %PA, whereas if none of these strategies were applied, energy input was minimised at about 15% PA. Account must be taken of combined effects of technical and consumption strategies to reduce the use of natural resources in food systems. It requires efforts from all actors to develop a food system that is able to supply the global population with safe and healthy food within environmental limits. Contents Chapter 1 General introduction Chapter 2 The effect of nutritional qual...

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The Material and Energy Basis of Rome: An Investigation of Direct and Indirect Resource Use through Material Flow, Energy and Footprint Methods

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Renewable energy from solid waste: life cycle analysis and social welfare

Renewable energy from solid waste: life cycle analysis and social welfare

Exploring an Urban System’s Dependence on the Environment as a Source and a Sink: The City of Rome (Italy) Across Space and Time Scales

Towards efficient use of resources in food systems : Exploring circular principles and strategies

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