Severity as a Priority Setting Criterion: Setting a Challenging Research Agenda

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria in Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda

The Energy Report for Uganda - A 100% Renewable Energy future by 2050

Uganda is endowed with abundant renewable energy potential from sources such as biomass, water, wind and the sun. However, this potential has not been fully utilized resulting in a situation where 15 percent of the population has access to electricity, while the majority (over 90%) depend on unsustainably used biomass and use rudimentary technologies to meet their energy needs. It is clear, that the provision of sustainable energy solutions in Uganda is crucial for alleviating poverty, strengthening the country’s economy and protecting the environment. Indeed, the Government of Uganda is committed to securing a stable energy supply for long-term social and economic development of the country. This is emphasised in the Constitution of Uganda (1995) and the Energy Policy (2002), whose goal is “To meet the energy needs of Uganda’s population for social and economic development in an environmentally sustainable manner.” Therefore, the purpose of this report is to highlight to all Ugandans, that a renewable energy future is not only possible, but perhaps the most appropriate path to take towards the transformation of Uganda’s energy sector. The report also shows that the transition to 100% renewable is cost effective, affordable and sustainable. It is also important to note that, though this transition towards renewable energy may come with some challenges, it is my hope that this report offers inspiration to government, businesses, and other stakeholders to look towards overcoming these challenges and move boldly towards a renewable energy future.This is the first WWF energy report produce for a subsaharan African (SSA) country. The report has three parts

The Energy Report for Uganda - A 100% Renewable Energy future by 2050

Uganda is endowed with abundant renewable energy potential from sources such as biomass, water, wind and the sun. However, this potential has not been fully utilized resulting in a situation where 15 percent of the population has access to electricity, while the majority (over 90%) depend on unsustainably used biomass and use rudimentary technologies to meet their energy needs. It is clear, that the provision of sustainable energy solutions in Uganda is crucial for alleviating poverty, strengthening the country’s economy and protecting the environment. Indeed, the Government of Uganda is committed to securing a stable energy supply for long-term social and economic development of the country. This is emphasised in the Constitution of Uganda (1995) and the Energy Policy (2002), whose goal is “To meet the energy needs of Uganda’s population for social and economic development in an environmentally sustainable manner.” Therefore, the purpose of this report is to highlight to all Ugandans, that a renewable energy future is not only possible, but perhaps the most appropriate path to take towards the transformation of Uganda’s energy sector. The report also shows that the transition to 100% renewable is cost effective, affordable and sustainable. It is also important to note that, though this transition towards renewable energy may come with some challenges, it is my hope that this report offers inspiration to government, businesses, and other stakeholders to look towards overcoming these challenges and move boldly towards a renewable energy future.This is the first WWF energy report produce for a subsaharan African (SSA) country. The report has three parts

On environmental LCA for selected transport fuels

This short report is part of the project ”Integrated assessment of vehicle fuels with sustainability LCA - social and environmental impacts in a life cycle perspective” financed by the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Renewable Transportation Fuels (f3) and the Swedish Energy Agency. The project aims at a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) of a few selected transport fuels including biomass based and fossil based fuels. The selected transport fuels include (i) Petrol from crude oil originating from oilfields in Nigeria, (ii) Petrol from crude oil originating from oilfields in Russia, (iii) Ethanol based on sugar cane from Brazil and (iv) Ethanol based on corn produced in the USA. The purpose with this report is to present comparable life cycle inventory results for a selection of environmental aspects for the studied transport fuel chains. A brief review of a few existing life cycle assessments of the four selected transport fuel chains was performed. It was found that the reviewed studies did not provide results that are easily comparable. Thus, in order to obtain comparable life cycle assessments, judged crucial for the continued analysis in the project, adapted life cycle inventories from the Ecoinvent centre (Ecoinvent centre, 2014) were adopted and presented in this study. The result will be further analysed in the project

Implementing BECCS in Swedish district heating – An SDG assessment

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) applied to biogenic CO2 (BECCS) provides an opportunity at a societal level to compensate hard-to-abate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper provides a sustainability analysis of the BECCS value chain from, CO2 separation and transport to storage, compared to a reference plant with no CCS. The impact of the value chains sustainability has been analysed based on the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and compared to a reference case with no CCS. The analysis, under the given assumptions, shows that capture, transport and storage of CO2 in connection with biomass-fired CHP plants can make significant contributions to CO2 removal (CDR), considering the entire value chain, and thus make a important contributions towards climate change objectives (SDG 13). At the same time other impacts arise with respect to a number of sustainability aspects. These include both positive impacts, such as job creation and adaptation of society in a direction towards lower climate impact, but also a negative impact on ecosystems as well as emissions of air pollutants from transport and other activities. A conventional CHP plant today produces electricity and heat as energy services. In a CHP plant with CCS, the new energy service CO2 capture will also be added to the electricity and heating services. The addition of CO2 capture as an energy service will result in reduced output of electricity and in many cases heat. This leads to a negative impact on SDG 7, Sustainable energy for all. At the same time the new service CDR is generated which is an essential part of society’s strategy to reach ambitious GHG mitigation targets. In the long run, society can meet the challenge of reduced production of electricity and heat from CHP plants through measures for increased supply- or demand-side energy efficiency (new technologies for CO2 capture with radically reduced energy needs and efficiency measures in the building stock). In a shorter-term perspective, measures for additional energy supply could be implemented to compensate for losses, e.g., supplementary heat supply systems such as solar heating systems with seasonal storage and increased biomass supply to the CHP plants. The latter, however, needs to be put in relation to ongoing discussions about the forest as an energy resource, source for raw materials in a circular economy, and as a natural environment and source of various ecosystem services for the benefit of society. The results of this study show that the sustainability assessment for the BECCS solution is largely based on underlying assumptions about what is required to meet climate objectives. The results here provide direct positive results with regard to sustainability goals for societal and industrial development. This is due to the assumption about the need to establish permanent CDR, and that BECCS is the only measure today in Sweden that can quickly deliver on this demand.QC 20231101</p

Implementing BECCS in Swedish district heating – An SDG assessment

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) applied to biogenic CO2 (BECCS) provides an opportunity at a societal level to compensate hard-to-abate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper provides a sustainability analysis of the BECCS value chain from, CO2 separation and transport to storage, compared to a reference plant with no CCS. The impact of the value chains sustainability has been analysed based on the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and compared to a reference case with no CCS. The analysis, under the given assumptions, shows that capture, transport and storage of CO2 in connection with biomass-fired CHP plants can make significant contributions to CO2 removal (CDR), considering the entire value chain, and thus make a important contributions towards climate change objectives (SDG 13). At the same time other impacts arise with respect to a number of sustainability aspects. These include both positive impacts, such as job creation and adaptation of society in a direction towards lower climate impact, but also a negative impact on ecosystems as well as emissions of air pollutants from transport and other activities. A conventional CHP plant today produces electricity and heat as energy services. In a CHP plant with CCS, the new energy service CO2 capture will also be added to the electricity and heating services. The addition of CO2 capture as an energy service will result in reduced output of electricity and in many cases heat. This leads to a negative impact on SDG 7, Sustainable energy for all. At the same time the new service CDR is generated which is an essential part of society’s strategy to reach ambitious GHG mitigation targets. In the long run, society can meet the challenge of reduced production of electricity and heat from CHP plants through measures for increased supply- or demand-side energy efficiency (new technologies for CO2 capture with radically reduced energy needs and efficiency measures in the building stock). In a shorter-term perspective, measures for additional energy supply could be implemented to compensate for losses, e.g., supplementary heat supply systems such as solar heating systems with seasonal storage and increased biomass supply to the CHP plants. The latter, however, needs to be put in relation to ongoing discussions about the forest as an energy resource, source for raw materials in a circular economy, and as a natural environment and source of various ecosystem services for the benefit of society. The results of this study show that the sustainability assessment for the BECCS solution is largely based on underlying assumptions about what is required to meet climate objectives. The results here provide direct positive results with regard to sustainability goals for societal and industrial development. This is due to the assumption about the need to establish permanent CDR, and that BECCS is the only measure today in Sweden that can quickly deliver on this demand.QC 20231101</p