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Science for sustainability policy requires the handling of multi-dimensional and multi-scale analyses. Integrated assessment is about generating information relevant for decision-making. This generates a divide between two scientific paradigms: (1) ‘Post-Normal Science’ acknowledges the unavoidable existence of non-equivalent perceptions and representations of the reality; legitimate but contrasting...
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method aimed at identifying the environmental effects connected with a given product, process or activity along its life cycle. This paper presents results of the application of LCA method in order to evaluate the environmental advantages of natural gas over other fossil fuels and to have advanced techniques for analysing the environmental aspects of the gas industry...
Principles that appear to govern all systems including human societies were used to consider the time of economic descent ahead. These include the energy laws, the emergy concept, the maximum empower principle, the universal energy hierarchy, the conservation and hierarchical distribution of materials, the spatial organization of centers, and the pulsing paradigm. Population and cities, energy consumption...
Public interest is central to future energy. A transition from fossil to renewable fuels would be likely to involve post-normal science, which is science constrained by uncertainty, urgency, high stakes, and public values. Future energy transformation will involve post-normal science because public interest will be central, and political will may be as limiting as engineering issues. This paper discusses...
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies of products with a major part of their life cycle in biological production systems (i.e. forestry and agriculture) are often incomplete because the assessment of the land use impact is not operational. Most method proposals include the quality of the land in a descriptive way using rank scores for an arbitrarily selected set of indicators.This paper first offers...
This paper tries to give a general description of a thermodynamic cycle (whatever kind and number of transformations) as a function of a set of independent parameters characterising thermodynamic transformations, as well as of constraints imposed on the cycle by plant physical nature, lay-out and controls. An ‘Associated Reversible Transformation’ (A.R.T.), defined in the paper, is used to describe...
This paper explains some capabilities and drawbacks of the emerging field of exergy accounting. Among other applications, exergy accounting is successfully used for diagnosing energy systems and for the accounting of Earth's exergy resources. Both applications rely on the concept of exergetic cost. This concept tries to measure the amount of exergy resources to produce any good. The process of cost...
The hydrogen economy is defined as the industrial system in which one of the universal energy carriers is hydrogen (the other is electricity) and hydrogen is oxidized to water that may be reused by applying an external energy source for dissociation of water into its component elements hydrogen and oxygen. There are three different primary energy-supply system classes which may be used to implement...
The paper describes an application of a computational tool developed for the extended exergy accounting (EEA) of complex systems. The application is presented in an interactive graphic form to enhance its impact on the user. The computational part is based on a modular process simulator, originally devised to compute the mass- and energy balances and the exergy accounting of energy conversion systems:...
This contains my goals for, and reactions to, the Panel on ‘Strategies’ at the Workshop, ‘Advances in Energy Studies: Exploring Supplies, Constraints, and Strategies’, 23–27 May 2000, Porto Venere, Italy. The very ambitious goals for the four speakers were not fully realized; hence my reactions are also goals for future work. I propose and discuss specific topics and techniques that are appropriately...
A comprehensive method of analysis based on energetic, exergetic, emergetic and economic evaluations is proposed in the paper and the application presented. The method is applied to selected energy conversion processes (hydroelectric and thermoelectric ones and bioethanol production). Results are presented and compared while general considerations about the effectiveness of the different approaches...
This paper discusses sustainability problems related to socioeconomic energy flows based upon the societal metabolism approach. Contrary to conventional energy statistics that only include energy used in technical devices, this approach considers all kinds of energy flows related to human societies, including nutritional energy flows of humans and domesticated animals. Based upon human population...
This paper challenges the view that improving the efficiency of energy use will lead to a reduction in national energy consumption, and hence is an effective policy for reducing national CO 2 emissions. It argues that improving energy efficiency lowers the implicit price of energy and hence make its use more affordable, thus leading to greater use—an effect termed the ‘rebound’ or ‘takeback’...
This paper presents a conceptualized combined heat and power (CHP) scheme based on coal gasification and with a high temperature, pressurized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) in the topping cycle and a bottoming steam cogeneration cycle. An energy analysis is done for this CHP plant. The study reveals that such a plant offers a substantial saving in fuel with respect to separate plants for the same power...
In this paper, we appraise sustainable household consumption from a global perspective. Using per capita energy requirements as an indicator of environmental pressure, we focus on the importance of income growth in a cross-country analysis. Our analysis is supported by a detailed within-country analysis encompassing five countries, in which we assess the importance of various socioeconomic-demographic...
In 2001, the US Department of Energy (DOE) initiated a rulemaking process to consider whether to amend the existing energy efficiency standards for furnaces and boilers. A key factor in DOE's consideration of new standards is the economic impacts on consumers of possible revisions to energy-efficiency standards. Determining cost-effectiveness requires an appropriate comparison of the additional first...
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