Consumer Footprint. Basket of Products indicator on Mobility

The EU Consumer Footprint aims at assessing the environmental impacts of consumption. The methodology for assessing the impacts is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of products (or services) purchased and used in one year by an EU citizen. This report is about the subset indicator of the consumer footprint of the basket of product (BoP) on mobility. The baseline model of the BoP mobility is built using statistics about European fleet composition and intensity of use of transport means by European citizens, i.e. the number of kilometers travelled by road, rail and air transport. These data are then allocated to 27 representative products, including 16 types of passenger cars, 3 types of 2-wheelers, 3 types of bus transport, 2 types of rail transport and 3 types of air transport. The resulting baseline inventory model, referring to the year 2010, has been assessed for 15 different impact categories, using the ILCD life cycle impact assessment method. A sensitivity analysis has been run for some impact categories, with a selection of recent impact assessment models and factors. Results allows a wide array of considerations, as this study reports overall impact in Europe due to mobility, average impact per citizen, share of impact due to each transport mode and type of vehicle. The results highlight that road transport is by far the mode of transport contributing the most to the impact of EU citizens’ mobility. Within this macro-category, the product groups that can be considered hotspots for the European mobility are passenger cars, and especially diesel cars. In terms of impact categories, resource depletion is the most important one, especially for road transport (due to the materials used to build the vehicles and the fossil fuels used in the use stage). The contribution of life cycle stages to the overall impact of the BoP mobility varies among impact categories: vehicle usage, fuel production and vehicle production are the most relevant stages for almost all the impact categories considered. To assess potential benefits stemming from selected ecoinnovations applied to the mobility sector, the Consumer Footprint BoP mobility baseline has been assessed against five scenarios. The scenarios developed for the BoP mobility regard the use of eco-driving measures (including technical and behavioural changes), an increased use of biofuels in substitution of the current blend of diesel, and the evolution of hybrid and electric mobility (as the share of hybrid and electric vehicles in the European fleet and of the expected increase in efficiency of the batteries). In addition, one scenario is directly related to changes in the lifestyle of European citizens, namely the shift of a portion of their mobility habits from private cars to public transport, for what concern the mobility in urban areas. The amount of km travelled yearly by European citizens plays a relevant role in the assessment of the scenarios representing possible improvement options for the sector. Indeed, the number of person*km (pkm) travelled yearly by an average European citizen is constantly growing over time. This is reflected in the larger impact (over all the impact categories considered) of the baseline for the reference year 2015 over the baseline 2010 and of scenario 1 (expected situation in 2030) over the baselines 2015 and 2010. The increase of the pkm travelled offsets the reduction of the impact per km travelled achieved through the introduction of cars compliant to the new emission standards (Euro 6) and through the increase of electric and hybrid vehicles. The expected improvements related to electric and hybrid cars, and especially on the batteries, could lead to a reduction of the impact of these type of vehicles up to 40% (e.g. impact of improved electrical vehicle on freshwater eutrophication, compared to the current performance of electrical vehicle). However, the relevance of these improvements on the overall impact of the BoP (i.e. of the mobility of EU citizens) is strongly dependent on the share of vehicles in the fleet. In general, the impact reduction expected from the single solutions tested in the scenarios has a limited effect on the overall impact of the BoP (i.e. of the consumption area of mobility) if they are considered one by one and it is the combination of several measures that may help to maximize the benefits. Specifically for the mobility sector, a reduction of the total kms travelled by road, rail or air means of transport (e.g. by increasing the kms travelled by bicycle or by walking, when possible), is needed, to avoid that the reduction of impact achieved through technological improvements is offset by the continuous increase in the amount of pkm over time.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Prevention of Waste in the Circular Economy: Analysis of Strategies and Identification of Sustainable Targets - The food waste example

This report continues and further advances the work conducted by the JRC in the field of sustainable management of food waste, which resulted in the publication of the 2015 report “Improving Sustainability and Circularity of European Food Waste Management with a Life Cycle Approach”. It focuses on the broad European waste management context and, in particular, provides insight and analysis on the sustainability of food waste prevention strategies. Among other municipal waste streams, food waste gained prominence in the political debate in light of the recent Circular Economy (CE) package. In fact, the CE Action Plan included food waste within the so-called “priority areas”, i.e. areas that should be carefully considered to strengthen the circularity of the European economy. Against this background, this report analyses and evaluates the efficacy of some selected strategies for food waste prevention implemented at Member States’ and regional levels. A streamlined ‘stakeholder analysis’ is also developed in order to identify the most relevant stakeholders along the food supply chain and analyse their influence/relation with the mechanisms that lead to food wastage. Moreover, the report presents a novel and straightforward life cycle based methodology that helps identifying sustainable targets for food waste prevention in different contexts. The analysis of food waste prevention strategies being implemented by Member States and presented in this report seems to indicate that reducing food waste generation is a very complex to achieve in practice. The key reasons for this are the complexity of the food supply chain and the fact that a variety of integrated and well-coordinated measures that involve all stakeholders along the food supply chain need to be adopted to effectively tackle the problem. Moreover, sometimes the lack of reliable and coherent data is posing a threat to the successful identification of the most appropriate measures. It is also noted that food waste prevention measures are often set without considering how their implementation will influence the sustainability performance of food waste management. On the other hand, this report stresses that the definition of food waste prevention targets should follow the definition of the desired improvement of the overall sustainability performance. Towards this goal, the methodology presented in this report tries to identify environmentally sustainable targets for food waste prevention that allows achieving a given reduction of the environmental impacts along the food supply chain.JRC.D.3-Land Resource

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Bioeconomy Products and Processes – Progress Report 1

The present document compiles the main outputs of the environmental sustainability assessment in the framework of the Bioeconomy Observatory as at the end of 2014, for the purposes of the EU Bioeconomy Investment Summit 2015. The selection includes fourteen environmental sustainability factsheets and a brief explanatory document that provides an overview of the structure and content of the factsheets.All these documents were already approved in PUBSY (PUBSY Ref. JRC93246).JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Improving Sustainability and Circularity of European Food Waste Management with a Life Cycle Approach

In the past years, several research initiatives have been promoted in the area of food waste. Many of these were focused on the identification of key drivers of food wastage and on the quantification of food waste generation. While these initiatives provided fairly accurate information over European food waste generation and management routes, they did not always deliver comprehensive and comparable knowledge on the sustainability of food waste management and on ways to mitigate negative consequences at environmental, economic and social levels. Building on most recent methodological advancement and policy needs, the work presented in this report aims at providing policy/decision makers and waste managers with a life-cycle based framework methodology to quantify the environmental and economic sustainability performance of European food waste management. This methodology can help identify options for improvement of such performance, thus can offer relevant insight to the decision making process. A numerical case study is also developed. This is meant to give an example of simplified application of the proposed methodology to a fictitious European waste management context. The environmental dimension has been evaluated with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software EASETECH, while the economic assessment is conducted based on a number of different indicators expressing the costs associated with food waste management. This methodology makes use of multi-objective optimization and Pareto optimality concepts in order to help identify most sustainable management options for food waste, intended as those that minimize environmental and economic impacts. In any case, the proposed methodology is meant to only provide relevant information that can support science-based decision making. The final choice will in fact depend on a number of additional aspects that are beyond the scope of this report and also depends on the preferences of the decision maker.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Regional patterns of energy production and consumption factors in Europe Exploratory Project EREBILAND - European Regional Energy Balance and Innovation Landscape

The Resilient Energy Union with Forward Looking Climate Change Policy is one the ten priorities of the overarching Agenda for Jobs, Growth, Fairness and Democratic Change of the European Commission. The Communication on the Energy Union package and its Annex clearly identify EU-wide targets and policy objectives. The Exploratory Project EREBILAND (European Regional Energy Balance and Innovation Landscape) aims at supporting efficient patterns of regional energy supply and demand in Europe. Integration of spatial scales, from EU-wide to regional or local, and a cross-sector approach, are at the core of the project. The approach is based on territorial disaggregation of information, and the development of optimisation scenarios at regional scale. It is centred around the Land Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment (LUISA) modelling platform for the assessment of policies and investments that have spatial impacts, in interaction with the JRC-EU-TIMES model – a bottom-up, technology-rich model representing the EU28+ energy system – and the model RHOMOLO that integrates economic and some social dimensions of regional development. Based on currently operational and up-to-date tools available within the EC, the purpose of the EREBILAND project is to: • provide an overview of the current trends of regional energy production and consumption patterns, and • link these patterns to the structural characteristics of the regions, among which: population density and urbanisation trends, development of different economic sectors, and availability of resources and technological infrastructure. This report presents the outcomes of the EREBILAND Project during its first year. In particular, electricity generation and energy consumed by transport sector are analysed, under the EU Energy Reference Scenario 2013, throughout the period 2015 - 2030. Main results of the analysis dedicated to the electricity generation are: • Electricity generation from biomass increases in the large majority of European regions; a slight decrease can be found only in regions producing electricity already in 2015 above the EU28 average (in Denmark). • Electricity produced from biogas experiences less steep changes then biomass, with almost 50% of NUTS2 decreasing or not changing considerably the amount of electricity produced from this source. • Coal: electricity generated from lignite undergoes a significant reduction in all regions using this fuel already in 2015. Conversely, trends in electricity generated from hard coal are more stable, with some regions experiencing an increase: the average change is higher than 50% (a few regions in Eastern European countries), but steeper increases can be found in Austria, Sweden and the United Kingdom. • The amount of electricity generated from gas generally decreases across Europe from 2015 to 2030, with an average decrease higher than 90%. • Geothermal is the least diffuse source used to generate electricity in Europe and only few regions are represented. • Hydroelectric: the amount of electricity generated from this source is in general forecasted to increase in Europe from 2015 to 2030. Exceptions are a few regions in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and most NUTS2 in the UK. • Electricity generated from nuclear is forecasted to decrease in the majority of the regions with active nuclear power plants in 2015. • Oil: the majority of the regions generating electricity from this fuel in 2015, experience a decrease in 2030. Notable exceptions are a few regions in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Slovenia. • Electricity produced from solar is forecasted to increase in almost three quarters of European regions. The only regions where electricity from solar is forecasted to decrease are located in Greece and Romania. • Wind: electricity generated from wind, both on- and off-shore, is in general forecasted to increase in Europe. The largest increases in electricity generated from on-shore wind (above 5 times the 2015 generation levels) can be found in few regions in Czech Republic, Finland, Lubuskie in Poland, the north-est NUTS2 in Romania, Western Slovakia and Slovenia. Main results of the analysis dedicated to energy consumption of the transport sector are: • In more than two thirds of European regions, the energy supplied to cars (fuel: diesel) decreases from 2015 to 2030, with an average decrease of almost 20%. • The energy supplied to cars (fuels: gas and LPG) is forecasted to decrease throughout all European regions. The decrease is more gradual in few regions in Denmark, Portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy. • Energy supplied to cars (fuel: gasoline) is forecasted to decrease in more than 80% of the European regions, with an average decrease of 27%. • The energy supplied to heavy duty trucks (fuel: diesel) is forecasted to progressively decrease from 2015 to 2030 in 66% of the European regions, with an average decrease of more than 8%. • The energy supplied to light duty trucks (fuel: diesel) is forecasted to steeply decrease throughout European regions. • The energy supplied to light duty trucks (fuel: gasoline) is forecasted to increase in more than 90% of European regions, with an average increase of more than 40% from 2015 to 2030. The highest increases (above 70%) take place in eleven regions in Germany, Walloon Brabant in Belgium, Flevoland in the Netherlands, Lower Austria and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. • The energy supplied to inter-city buses running on diesel is forecasted to increase from 2015 to 2030 in the large majority of European regions, with an average increase of more than 19%. • The energy supplied to urban buses (fuels: gas, diesel and gasoline) is going to moderately increase from 2015 to 2030 in almost 90% regions throughout EU-28, with an average growth of 15%. • Energy supplied to motorcycles (fuel: gasoline) is forecasted to increase in more than 80% of European NUTS2, with an average growth of 16%. • Energy supplied to cars (fuels: hybrid, electric and hydrogen) is forecasted to increase throughout Europe, in general with sharp increases. • Energy supplied to heavy duty trucks (fuel: gas) and light duty trucks (fuel: LPG) is forecasted to increase in all European regions from 2015 to 2020. In most NUTS2 this trend is kept or even accelerates between 2020 and 2030. The only regions where the trend is reversed (lower energy supplied in 2030 compared to 2020) are located in Poland, Greece, Finland (only Åland) and Croatia (only Jadranska Hrvatska).JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Cancer stem cells from human glioblastoma resemble but do not mimic original tumors after in vitro passaging in serum-free media

Human gliomas harbour cancer stem cells (CSCs) that evolve along the course of the disease, forming highly heterogeneous subpopulations within the tumour mass. These cells possess self-renewal properties and appear to contribute to tumour initiation, metastasis and resistance to therapy. CSC cultures isolated from surgical samples are considered the best preclinical in vitro model for primary human gliomas. However, it is not yet well characterized to which extent their biological and functional properties change during in vitro passaging in the serum-free culture conditions. Here, we demonstrate that our CSC-enriched cultures harboured from one to several CSC clones from the human glioma sample. When xenotransplanted into mouse brain, these cells generated tumours that reproduced at least three different dissemination patterns found in original tumours. Along the passages in culture, CSCs displayed increased expression of stem cell markers, different ratios of chromosomal instability events, and a varied response to drug treatment. Our findings highlight the need for better characterization of CSC-enriched cultures in the context of their evolution in vitro, in order to uncover their full potential as preclinical models in the studies aimed at identifying molecular biomarkers and developing new therapeutic approaches of human gliomas.Peer reviewe