Sustainable energy: choices, problems and opportunities

About the Book: The world's dependence on fossil fuels is widely acknowledged to be a major cause of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thus there is an urgent need to develop energy sources with lower environmental impact, with attention focusing on renewable energy sources. Concise, authoritative, up-to-date and readable, this book reviews various energy technologies, as well as taking a critical look at the political, social and economic aspects. Throughout, the emphasis is on renewable energy sources (wind, wave, solar, biomass, etc), but a discussion of fossil fuels and nuclear power is also presented. This timely book, written by recognised experts, will be welcomed by those in the energy industries as well as by policy-makers, consultants and engineers. Students and lecturers will also find the material invaluable

“Foodplate” web application for healthy and environmentally-friendly eating

“FOODWEB – Baltic environment, food and health: from habits to awareness”. The project is financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and is carried out by the Central Baltic INTERREG IV A Programme 2007–2013.Project web page: http://foodweb.ut.ee

MCDM approach for planning a sustainable livestock enterprise

Beside the livestock activity provides excellent nutritional ingredients for the human diet, growing conflict among stakeholders are caused by the sharing of the property rights about the environment. Traditionally livestock management was focused on profit maximization related to scale economies, however an increasing number of stakeholders are concerned about the negative side effect of environmental externalities and solicit to adopt sustainable technologies to curb the natural resource depletion, soil and water pollution, gaseous emissions and others. Purpose of this paper is to introduce a revisited multi-criteria decision making approach based on solid theoretical fundaments to produce sustainable solutions to achieve economic, social and environmental objectives

Prospects for radical emissions reduction through behaviour and lifestyle change

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners across the social sciences, in policy and beyond have proposed, trialled and developed a wide range of theoretical and practical approaches designed to bring about changes in behaviours and lifestyles that contribute to climate change. With the exception of the establishment of a small number of iconic behaviours such as recycling, it has however proved extremely difficult to bring about meaningful transformations in personal greenhouse gas emissions at either the individual or societal level, with multiple reviews now pointing to the limited efficacy of current approaches. We argue that the majority of approaches designed to achieve mitigation have been constrained by the need to operate within prevailing social scientific, economic and political orthodoxies which have precluded the possibility of non-marginal change. In this paper we ask what a truly radical approach to reducing personal emissions would look like from social science perspectives which challenge the unstated assumptions severely limiting action to date, and which explore new alternatives for change. We emphasise the difficulties likely to impede the instituting of genuinely radical societal change regarding climate change mitigation, whilst proposing ways that the ground could be prepared for such a transformation to take place

STONYFIELD FARM – THE BUSINESS MODEL FOR SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY: A CASE STUDY

Founded in 1983 as a small family owned yogurt firm, Stonyfield Farm became a $96.8 million company in 2002 with over 4% of the yogurt market in U.S. and the largest producer of organic yogurt nationwide. Despite its impressive growth, the company has held to its founding mission to support small family-run dairies in New England, provide a healthful, productive and enjoyable workplace for all employees, and serves as a model to show that environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable. This case study analyzes the drivers and incentives for environmental and social decision-making that have driven the company on the way to sustainability. It demonstrates that even small companies with limited resources can achieve business success while following sustainability principles

Doing cold smarter

Cold has been much neglected in the energy debate. Governments are developing strategies and policies to green everything from electricity to transport to heat, but the energy and environmental impacts of cooling have so far been largely ignored. This is a serious oversight, since making things cold is energy intensive and can be highly polluting, and demand for cooling in all its forms is booming worldwide – especially in developing countries. According to one projection, by the end of this century global demand for air conditioning alone could consume the equivalent of half our worldwide electricity generation today – and most of the increase will come in developing markets. The ‘greening’ of cold is clearly an urgent global problem – but it may also offer Britain a massive business opportunity. Cold may have been ignored but is vitally important to many aspects of modern life. An effective cold chain, for example, is essential for tackling problems such as food waste, food security, water conservation and public health. Cooling is also critical for many less obvious but essential functions: data centres couldn’t operate without it, nor for example MRI scanners in medicine or superconductors in power electronics. Cooling also provides modern levels of comfort in hot countries – and can make the difference between some regions being habitable or not. At the same time, vast amounts of cold are wasted – for instance during the regasification of LNG – which could in principle be recycled to satisfy some of this demand and start to reduce the environmental damage caused by cooling. Such a system-level approach – which starts by asking what energy services we need, and what is the least damaging way to provide them, rather than accepting existing practices as a fait accompli – has recently been coined the ‘Cold Economy’. It is clear the Cold Economy could unleash a wide range of innovative clean cold technologies and provide energy resilience, economic growth and environmental benefits, but there is an urgent need to develop a system-level analysis of this problem and the potential solutions to inform both industry and policymakers. The Birmingham Policy Commission: Doing Cold Smarter was convened to start this work