Moving from a Product-Based Economy to a Service-Based Economy for a More Sustainable Future

Traditionally, economic growth and prosperity have been linked with the availability, production and distribution of tangible goods as well as the ability of consumers to acquire such goods. Early evidence regarding this connection dates back to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), in which any activity not resulting in the production of a tangible good is characterized as unproductive of any value." Since then, this coupling of economic value and material production has been prevalent in both developed and developing economies throughout the world. One unintended consequence of this coupling has been the exponential increase in the amount of solid waste being generated. The reason is that any production and consumption of material goods eventually generates the equivalent amount of (or even more) waste. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that, with today's manufacturing and supply chain management technologies, it has become cheaper to dispose and replace most products rather than to repair and reuse them. This has given rise to what some call a disposable society." To put things in perspective: In 2012 households in the U.K. generated approximately 22 thousand tons of waste, which amounted to 411 kg of waste generated per person (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2015). During the same time period, households in the U.S. generated 251 million tons of waste, which is equivalent to a person generating approximately 2 kg of waste every day (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2012). Out of these 251 million tons of total waste generated, approximately 20% of the discarded items were categorized as durable goods. The disposal of durable goods is particularly worrisome because they are typically produced using material from non- renewable resources such as iron, minerals, and petroleum-based raw materials

When the Background Matters: Using Scenarios from Integrated Assessment Models in Prospective Life Cycle Assessment

Prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) needs to deal with the large epistemological uncertainty about the future to support more robust future environmental impact assessments of technologies. This study proposes a novel approach that systematically changes the background processes in a prospective LCA based on scenarios of an integrated assessment model (IAM), the IMAGE model. Consistent worldwide scenarios from IMAGE are evaluated in the life cycle inventory using ecoinvent v3.3. To test the approach, only the electricity sector was changed in a prospective LCA of an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) and an electric vehicle (EV) using six baseline and mitigation climate scenarios until 2050. This case study shows that changes in the electricity background can be very important for the environmental impacts of EV. Also, the approach demonstrates that the relative environmental performance of EV and ICEV over time is more complex and multifaceted than previously assumed. Uncertainty due to future developments manifests in different impacts depending on the product (EV or ICEV), the impact category, and the scenario and year considered. More robust prospective LCAs can be achieved, particularly for emerging technologies, by expanding this approach to other economic sectors beyond electricity background changes and mobility applications as well as by including uncertainty and changes in foreground parameters. A more systematic and structured composition of future inventory databases driven by IAM scenarios helps to acknowledge epistemological uncertainty and to increase the temporal consistency of foreground and background systems in LCAs of emerging technologies

Comparative LCA technology improvement opportunities for a 1.5 MW wind turbine in the context of an offshore wind farm

Wind energy is playing an increasingly important role in the development of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies leading to projections in reliability and performance of future wind turbine designs. This paper presents life cycle assessment (LCA) results of design variations for a 1.5 MW wind turbine due to the potential for advances in technology to improve the performance of a 1.5 MW wind turbine. Five LCAs have been conducted for design variants of a 1.5 MW wind turbine. The objective is to evaluate potential environmental impacts per kilowatt hour of electricity generated for a 114 MW onshore wind farm. Results for the baseline turbine show that higher contributions to impacts were obtained in the categories Ozone Depletion Potential, Marine Aquatic Eco-toxicity Potential, Human Toxicity Potential and Terrestrial Eco-toxicity Potential compared to Technology Improvement Opportunities (TIOs) 1 to 4. Compared to the baseline turbine, TIO 1 showed increased impact contributions to Abiotic Depletion Potential, Acidification Potential, Eutrophication Potential, Global Warming Potential and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential, and TIO 2 showed an increase in contributions to Abiotic Depletion Potential, Acidification Potential and Global Warming Potential. Additionally, lower contributions to all the environmental categories were observed for TIO 3 while increased contributions towards Abiotic Depletion Potential and Global Warming Potential were noted for TIO 4. A comparative LCA study of wind turbine design variations for a particular power rating has not been explored in the literature. This study presents new insight into the environmental implications related with projected wind turbine design advancements

Techno-Ecological Synergy: A Framework for Sustainable Engineering

Even though the importance of ecosystems in sustaining all human activities is well-known, methods for sustainable engineering fail to fully account for this role of nature. Most methods account for the demand for ecosystem services, but almost none account for the supply. Incomplete accounting of the very foundation of human well-being can result in perverse outcomes from decisions meant to enhance sustainability and lost opportunities for benefiting from the ability of nature to satisfy human needs in an economically and environmentally superior manner. This paper develops a framework for understanding and designing synergies between technological and ecological systems to encourage greater harmony between human activities and nature. This framework considers technological systems ranging from individual processes to supply chains and life cycles, along with corresponding ecological systems at multiple spatial scales ranging from local to global. The demand for specific ecosystem services is determined from information about emissions and resource use, while the supply is obtained from information about the capacity of relevant ecosystems. Metrics calculate the sustainability of individual ecosystem services at multiple spatial scales and help define necessary but not sufficient conditions for local and global sustainability. Efforts to reduce ecological overshoot encourage enhancement of life cycle efficiency, development of industrial symbiosis, innovative designs and policies, and ecological restoration, thus combining the best features of many existing methods. Opportunities for theoretical and applied research to make this framework practical are also discussed