Life Cycle Assessment of Noise Emissions: Comment on a Recent Publication

Industrial Ecolog

Three-Dimensional CFD Simulation of a Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolysis Cell

The energy shift towards carbon-free solutions is creating an ever-growing engineering interest in electrolytic cells, i.e., devices to produce hydrogen from water-splitting reactions. Among the available technologies, Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysis is the most promising candidate for coping with the intermittency of renewable energy sources, thanks to the short transient period granted by the solid thin electrolyte. The well-known principle of PEM electrolysers is still unsupported by advanced engineering practices, such as the use of multidimensional simulations able to elucidate the interacting fluid dynamics, electrochemistry, and heat transport. A methodology for PEM electrolysis simulation is therefore needed. In this study, a model for the multidimensional simulation of PEM electrolysers is presented and validated against a recent literature case. The study analyses the impact of temperature and gas phase distribution on the cell performance, providing valuable insights into the understanding of the physical phenomena occurring inside the cell at the basis of the formation rate of hydrogen and oxygen. The simulations regard two temperature levels (333 K and 353 K) and the complete polarization curve is numerically predicted, allowing the analysis of the overpotentials break-up and the multi-phase flow in the PEM cell. An in-house developed model for macro-homogeneous catalyst layers is applied to PEM electrolysis, allowing independent analysis of overpotentials, investigation into their dependency on temperature and analysis of the cathodic gas–liquid stratification. The study validates a comprehensive multi-dimensional model for PEM electrolysis, relevantly proposing a methodology for the ever-growing urgency for engineering optimization of such devices

Digesting the alphabet soup of LCA

Article / Letter to editorCentrum voor Milieuwetenschappen LeidenCML/Industriele Ecologi

Impact assessment modelling of the matter-less stressors in the context of Life Cycle Assessment

In the last three decades, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework has grown to establish itself as the leading tool for the assessment of the environmental impacts of product systems.LCA studies are now conducted globally both in and outside the academia and also used as a basis for policy making.Now that the science behind existing and established impact assessment models is more solid, LCA modellers may work on deepening and broadening LCA, and on tackling the issues that make the framework incomplete or uncertain.This work of thesis deals with the complete modelling of stressors that are not related to the standard extraction/emission pattern, thus that do not relate to the extraction of a certain quantity of matter or to the emission of matter to the environment.These stressors may be defined in this acceptation as matter-less.The thesis analyses the development of impact assessment models for the case of sound emissions determining noise impacts, radio-frequency electromagnetic emissions leading to electromagnetic pollution, and light emissions determining ecological light pollution.Through the study of these matter-less stressors the computational structure and other methodological topics of the LCA framework are put to the test.Industrial Ecolog

Absolute or relative: the dark side of fund rating systems

Academic literature and market practitioners have always devoted great attention to the analysis of asset management products, with particular regard to fund classification and performance metrics. Less attention has been paid to rating methodologies and to the risk of attributing positive ratings to underperforming asset managers. The most widespread rating criterion is the ordinal one, which is based on the assumption that the best asset managers are those who have performed better than their competitors regardless of their ability to achieve a given threshold (i.e. a positive overperformance against the benchmark). Our study, after a description of the most common risk-adjusted performance measures, introduces the idea of attributing the rating on a cardinal basis, setting in advance a given threshold that should be achieved to receive a positive evaluation (i.e. a rating equal to or higher than 3 on a scale of 1–5). The empirical test conducted on a sample of funds (belonging to the main equity and bond asset classes) made it possible to quantify the e®ects of the cardinal approach on the attribution of the rating and on the probability of assigning a good rating to underperforming funds. Empirical analysis also highlighted how the cardinal method allows, on average, better performance than the ordinal one even in an out-of-sample framework. The differences between the two methodologies are particularly remarkable in efficient markets such as the North American equity market. The two rating assignment systems were also analyzed using contingency tables to test the ability to anticipate the default event (underperformance relative to the benchmark). The policy suggestion emerging from our study concerns the significant impact of the rating criterion in reducing the risk of recommending funds that, despite a good rating, have failed to perform satisfactorily and are unlikely to do so in the future either

Sustainable finance disclosure regulation insights: Unveiling socially responsible funds performance during COVID‐19 pandemic and Russia–Ukraine war

The transition towards a more sustainable financial market demands transparency andtrust from investors, objectives also pursued by the Sustainable Finance DisclosureRegulation (SFDR). Specifically, carefully assessing the risk-adjusted performance ofsustainable funds empowers investors to make informed decisions in alignment withtheir ethical and financial objectives. This article contributes to the debate on the per-formance of socially responsible investment (SRI) funds in times of crisis by evaluatingthe risk-adjusted performance of a sample of SRI and conventional funds, ranked inlight of the SFDR, during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war. Usinga two-step analysis, the results of the study show that funds with clear sustainabilityobjectives, as defined by Article 9 of the SFDR, were able to outperform conventionalfunds, but only a few months after the onset of the crisis periods, thus demonstratingpoor performance persistence. At the same time, sustainable funds with a focus onfinancial materiality, as defined by Article 8, were never able to generate significantlydifferent risk-adjusted performance from conventional funds. Our results show thatthe lack of performance persistence of Article 9 funds prevents an effective hedgingrole for investment strategies that consider extra-financial criteria. They also confirmthat the classification criteria introduced by the SFDR still need to be more specificand create more transparency in financial market