Development of My Footprint Calculator

The Environmental footprint is a very powerful tool that helps an individual to understand how their everyday activities are impacting environmental surroundings. Data shows that global climate change, which is a growing concern for nations all over the world, is already affecting humankind, plants and animals through raising ocean levels, droughts & desertification and changing weather patterns. In addition to a wide range of policy measures implemented by national and state governments, it is necessary for individuals to understand the impact that their lifestyle may have on their personal environmental footprint, and thus over the global climate change. “My Footprint Calculator” (myfootprintcalculator.com) has been designed to be one the simplest, yet comprehensive, web tools to help individuals calculate and understand their personal environmental impact. “My Footprint Calculator” is a website that queries users about their everyday habits and activities and calculates their personal impact on the environment. This website was re-designed to help users determine their environmental impact in various aspects of their lives ranging from transportation and recycling habits to water and energy usage with the addition of new features that will allow users to share their experiences and their best practices with other users interested in reducing their personal Environmental footprint. The collected data is stored in the database and a future goal of this work plans to analyze the collected data from all users (anonymously) for developing relevant trends and statistics

Co-designing Infrastructures

Co-designing Infrastructures tells the story of a research programme designed to bring the power of engineering and technology into the hands of grassroots community groups, to create bottom-up solutions to global crises. Four projects in London are described in detail, exemplifying community collaboration with engineers, designers and scientists to enact urban change. The projects co-designed solutions to air pollution, housing, the water-energy-food nexus, and water management. Rich case-study accounts are underpinned by theories of participation, environmental politics and socio-technical systems. The projects at the heart of the book are grounded in specific settings facing challenges familiar to urban communities throughout the world. This place-based approach to infrastructure is of international relevance as a foundation for urban resilience and sustainability. The authors document the tools used to deliver this work, providing guidance for others who are working to deliver local technical solutions to complex social and environmental problems around the world. This is a book for engineers, designers, community organisers and researchers. Co-authored by researchers, it includes voices of community collaborators, their experiences, frustrations and aspirations. It explores useful theories about infrastructure, engineering and resilience from international academic research, and situates them in community-based co-design experience, to explain why bottom-up approaches are needed and how they might succeed

Greening the Greyfields

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

Greening the Greyfields New Models for Regenerating the Middle Suburbs of Low-Density Cities

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

Detailed spatial analysis of renewables’ potential and heat:A study of Groningen Province in the northern Netherlands

Spatially sensitive regional renewables’ potentials are greatly influenced by existing land-use claims and related spatial and environmental policies. Similarly, heat particularly related to low-temperature demand applications in the built environment (BE) is highly spatially explicit. This study developed an analytical approach for a detailed spatial analysis of future solar PV, onshore wind, biomass, and geothermal and industrial waste heat potentials at a regional level and applied in the Dutch Province of Groningen. We included spatial policies, various spatial claims, and other land-use constraints in developing renewable scenarios for 2030 and 2050. We simultaneously considered major spatial claims and multiple renewable energy sources. Claims considered are the BE, agriculture, forest, nature, and network and energy infrastructure, with each connected to social, ecological, environmental, technical, economic, and policy-related constraints. Heat demand was further analyzed by creating highly granular demand density maps, comparing them with regional heat supply potential, and identifying the economic feasibility of heat networks. We analyzed the possibilities of combining multiple renewables on the same land. The 2050 renewable scenarios results ranged 2–66 PJ for solar PV and 0–48 PJ for onshore wind and biomass ranged 3.5–25 PJ for both 2030 and 2050. These large ranges of potentials show the significant impact of spatial constraints and underline the need for understanding how they shape future energy policies. The heat demand density map shows that future heat networks are feasible in large population centers. Our approach is pragmatic and replicable in other regions, subject to data availability

Greening the Greyfields

This open access book outlines new concepts, development models, governance and implementation processes capable of addressing the challenges of transformative urban regeneration of cities at precinct scale

Reviewing the carbon footprint assessment of tourism: developing and evaluating life cycle assessment (LCA) to introduce a more holistic approach to existing methodologies.

It is universally recognised that, globally, the tourism industry is a noticeable contributor to the carbon footprint. The magnitudes of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from specific tourism products and services at local levels are less established and large variations in estimates exist. Diversity of the tourism sector, constraints in data procurement and under-development of methods for tourism carbon impact appraisal are the primary reasons. These hinder accurate evaluations and hamper development of reliable carbon performance indicators, thus making direct comparisons between tourism products and services difficult. The issue of the ‘indirect’ carbon impacts, additional carbon requirements from the nonuse phases of a product or service life cycle, which can be further magnified by the supply chain, is of special concern. These carbon footprints have never been comprehensively assessed in tourism, especially at the level of specific products and services. The evidence from the non-tourism literature suggests that the ‘indirect’ carbon impacts from tourism-related activities can be high, thus calling for more indepth research on this issue. The aim of this study is to contribute to the development of reliable carbon footprint assessment methodologies in tourism. It proposes an approach for more holistic estimates of GHG emissions from tourism products and services and appraises the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method whose merit in estimating the ‘indirect’ carbon impacts is broadly recognised. The evidence of the application of LCA in tourism is limited. To test the viability of a new technique in the tourism context, the study employs a case study approach and applies a simplified derivative of LCA, Life Cycle Energy Analysis (LCEA), to assess the carbon footprint from a popular tourism product, a holiday package tour. LCEA is compared against existing methodological alternatives for estimating carbon footprints from holiday travel. This is to understand strengths and weaknesses in the LCA (LCEA) approach, to critically evaluate the new technique compared to the alternatives, and to identify the most accurate and cost-effective method for holistic assessment. The assessment results demonstrate the importance of the ‘indirect’ GHG emissions in tourism. The findings also show that, despite the new outlook it brings to tourism carbon footprint appraisal, LCEA cannot effectively capture the full range of carbon impacts. This is because a number of methodological inconsistencies affect the accuracy of estimates. As limitations are also typical for the more established methodological alternatives, a new, hybrid LCEA-related assessment approach is developed. It is argued that this hybrid method can address the identified methodological shortcomings, thus representing currently the most rigorous technique for carbon impact appraisal in tourism. This study does more than reinforcing the methodological base for tourism carbon footprint assessment by developing a new method. It provides recommendations on how to improve the general quality and enhance the reliability of LCA (LCEA) for application in other industries where it has a long-standing tradition of use. Directions are also proposed on how to refine collection of the input data for carbon footprint assessment in tourism, in order to obtain more accurate results and reduce uncertainty in estimates. Last but not least, suggestions are made on how to integrate more carbon-effective practices in the design of specific tourism products and services

Digitisation and Low-Carbon Energy Transitions

The world is digitising as the need for low-carbon transitions gains urgency. Decarbonising energy requires the digital process control of energy production, transmission and end use. Diversified electrification across sectors requires real-time digital coordination of distributed energy production, At the same time, digitisation is accompanied by significant increases in energy demand, partly compensated through energy efficiency gains. The emergent linkages between digitisation and decarbonisation – that constitute and enable the twin transition – are the subject of this book. The collection features authors from across the social sciences who situate digitisation and low-carbon energy transitions in the socio-technical and political economic contexts in which they unfold, to offer insights on the dynamics and contingencies of digitisation in and beyond the energy sector. This is an open access book

Greenhouse Gas Reduction Opportunities for Local Governments: A Quantification and Prioritization Framework

Local governments have steadily increased their initiative to address global climate change, and many present their proposed strategies through climate action plans (CAPs). This study conducts a literature review on current local approaches to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction strategies by assessing CAPs in California and presents common strategies in the transportation sector along with useful tools. One identified limitation of many CAPs is the omission of quantitative economic cost and emissions data for decision-making on the basis of cost-effectiveness. Therefore, this study proposes a framework for comparing strategies based on their life cycle emissions mitigation potential and costs. The results data can be presented in a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC) to allow for side-by-side comparison of considered strategies. Researchers partnered with Yolo and Unincorporated Los Angeles Counties to analyze 7 strategies in the transportation and energy sectors (five and two, respectively). A MACC was subsequently developed for each county. Applying the life cycle approach revealed strategies that had net cost savings over their life cycle, indicating there are opportunities for reducing emissions and costs. The MACC also revealed that some emissions reduction strategies in fact increased emissions on a life cycle basis. Applying the MACC framework to two case study jurisdictions illustrated both the feasibility and challenges of including quantitative analysis in their decision-making process. An additional barrier to using the MACC framework in the context of CAPs, is the mismatch between a life cycle and annual accounting basis for GHG emissions. Future work could explore more efficient data collection, alternative scopes of emissions for reporting, and environmental justice concerns.View the NCST Project Webpag