Methods for Sustainable Management of Contamination Sources in Urban Coastal Areas

Managing contaminated urban coastal areas is an important issue in today’s society. Harbor areas are transformed from industrial sites and shipyards, to housing areas with high environmental requirements. The use of coastal areas for aquaculture and fishing activities increases the need for cleanup of previous contamination sources. High environmental standards when handling dredged material from harbors and industrial activities are also required in our society today. Many countries including Norway have based the management for the coastal zone environment on use of health and ecological risk assessments (HERA). This means that there should be no adverse risk to human or ecological life due to exposure of contaminants from sediments or water. This single criteria framework based on the precautionary principle is inherently conservative and may introduce costly and resource consuming remediation methods with isolated focus on sediment disposal instead of beneficial use. In order to take more balanced management remedial decisions this thesis promotes a shift in management of contaminated areas from use of HERA alone to a multicriteria focused approach incorporating sustainable values. The main contributions of this thesis are: • Knowledge on how the present Norwegian management system deviates from a holistic risk governance concept. • Wider understanding of how social factors as risk perceptive values are influencing management processes. • A life cycle impact assessment model (LCIA) for marine sediment contamination allowing use of life cycle assessments for contaminated sediment problems. • A multicriteria involvement model (MIP) to promote participatory involvement processes • An integrative stochastic multicriteria decision model (SMCA) supporting sustainable decisions in contaminated sediment management

Assessing life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in the Norwegian defence sector for climate change mitigation

The military sector is an important global player in terms of monetary expenditure and resource use. However, reporting of military greenhouse gas emissions is often embedded into other activities and quantitative estimations are scarce. This paper assesses the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from the Norwegian defence sector from an organisational perspective. The total annual emissions add up to 0.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, corresponding to approximately 1.1% of the national emissions from Norwegian consumption. The results show that upstream activities are the main contributors to emission (68%), with only 32% allocated to the reporting organisation. From a management perspective, this distinction is important since these emissions may be mitigated through green procurement practices, in contrast to direct emissions that require operational reductions

Evaluation of factors affecting stakeholder risk perception of contaminated sediment disposal in Oslo harbour

The management of environmental pollution has changed considerably since the growth of environmental awareness in the late 1960s. The general increased environmental concern and involvement of stakeholders in today's environmental issues may enhance the need to consider risk in a much broader social context rather than just as an estimate of ecological hazard. Risk perception and the constructs and images of risks held by stakeholders and society are important items to address in the management of environmental projects, including the management of contaminated sediments. Here we present a retrospective case study that evaluates factors affecting stakeholder risk perception of contaminated sediment disposal that occurred during a remediation project in Oslo harbor, Norway. The choice to dispose dredged contaminated sediments in a confined aquatic disposal (CAD) site rather than at a land disposal site has received a lot of societal attention, attracted large media coverage, and caused many public discussions. A mixed method approach is used to investigate how risk perceptive affective factors (PAF), socio-demographic aspects, and participatory aspects have influenced the various stakeholders' preferences for the two different disposal options. Risk perceptive factors such as transparency in the decision making process and controllability of the disposal options have been identified as important for risk perception. The results of the study also support the view that there is no sharp distinction in risk perception between experts and other parties and emphasizes the importance of addressing risk perceptive affective factors in similar environmental decision-making processes. Indeed, PAFs such as transparency, openness, and information are fundamental to address in sensitive environmental decisions, such as sediment disposal alternatives, in order to progress to more technical questions such as the controllability and safety.acceptedVersio

From Ecological Risk Assessments to Risk Governance. Evaluation of the Norwegian Management System for Contaminated Sediments

Managing of contaminated sediments is a complex process that will naturally have to balance scientific, political, and economic interests. This study evaluates the Norwegian system for managing contaminated sediments toward a generic system for risk governance encompassing both knowledge, legally prescribed procedures, and social values. The review has been performed examining the management plans for 17 prioritized contaminated fjord systems in Norway. The results indicate a strong focus in the Norwegian management system on ecological risk assessment. This facilitates selection of local sustainable remediation measures, but may also complicate the balance toward other relevant interests in a decision-making process. The Norwegian system lacks management tools to identify and handle ambiguity through concern assessments and stakeholder involvement, and the decision-making process seems to a large extent based on ad hoc decisions, making it difficult to incorporate and document multicriteria evaluations into the management process. To develop a sustainable management system, encompassing environmental, economical, and social interests, a stronger focus on concern assessment and multicriteria evaluations is requiredsubmittedVersio

Life-cycle assessment of biochar production systems in tropical rural areas: Comparing flame curtain kilns to other production methods

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) using end point methods was performed for the generation and sequestration of one kg biochar by various pyrolysis methods suitable for rural tropical conditions. Flame curtain kilns, a novel, simple and cost-effective technology of biochar generation, were compared to earth mound non-improved kilns, retort kilns with off-gases combustion, pyrolytic cook-stoves allowing the use of the gas flame for cooking purposes, and iv) gasifiers with electricity production. The impact categories of climate change, particulate matter emissions, land use effects, minerals and fossil fuels were combined to provide the overall impact of biochar generation. In the LCA ranking, earth mound kilns were shown to have negative potential environmental impacts because of their gas and aerosol emissions. Flame curtain kilns had slightly lower potential impact than retort kilns and much lower impact than earth-mound kilns because of the avoidance of start-up wood and low material use and gas emissions. Making biochar from flame curtain kilns was observed to be environmentally neutral in a life-cycle perspective, as the production emissions were compensated for by carbon sequestration. Pyrolytic cook-stoves and gasifiers showed the most positive potential environmental impact in the LCA due to avoided firewood consumption and emissions from electricity generation, respectively. The generation and sequestration of biochar per se by flame curtain kilns was not found to result in direct environmental benefits. Co-benefits in the form of rural applicability, cost-efficiency and agricultural effects due to soil improvement are needed to warrant biochar implementation by this method

Evaluating alternative energy carriers in ferry transportation using a stochastic multi-criteria decision analysis approach

As part of ship acquisition decision making, owners and key stakeholders need to evaluate ship design and technology solutions across economic and environmental criteria in addition to safety and other regulatory requirements. Changes in technology, market, fiscal and other regulatory conditions may furthermore significantly influence value retention over the investment period. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) provides structure and clarity in otherwise complex decision problems, allowing decision makers to identify promising courses of action in a holistic manner. Combined with stochastic evaluation techniques, MCDM may facilitate problem exploration and learning in situations where outcomes are uncertain. In this article, we combine two variants of “Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis” (SMAA) with “Technique for Ordering of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution” (TOPSIS) to evaluate the use of biofuels, natural gas and electricity on Norwegian ferry crossings. We analyze uncertain criteria values for environmental impacts, costs, fuel access and public acceptance across seven ferry combinations for a crossing. Criteria weighting is performed deterministically and stochastically to extract and interpret the conditions under which alternatives perform well or poorly. The case study shows that all-electric propulsion is preferable, while plug-in hybrid solutions with natural gas also give a robust performance. The approach is beneficial in handling multiple, uncertain performance metrics and provides a transparent and holistic foundation for evaluating marine emission reduction technology options in ship acquisition decision contexts

Exploring the pathway from zero-energy to zero-emission building solutions: A case study of a Norwegian ofÞce building

This paper explores the most influential aspects regarding the environmental and economic performance of zero-energy and zero-emission buildings and proposes a pathway for transition in building solutions. A representative zero-energy office building in Norway is investigated with alternative design solutions to achieve zero-emission status i.e., the extensive use of locally generated energy through photovoltaic (PV) panels and the use of materials with low embodied emissions, such as low-carbon concrete and wood. A life cycle environmental and economic assessment is performed to evaluate specific indicators during the building life cycle: cumulative energy (CED), global warming potential (GWP), and equivalent annual cost (EAC). The extensive use of PV panels was most effective in lowering the operational energy because it reduced the CED by about 30% compared to the building as-built. However, the extensive use of wood in the construction contributed the most to GWP reduction, with around 30% decrease compared to the building as-built. Finally, the differences in EAC were interestingly insignificant among the alternatives, with the investment costs dominating the EAC for all designs examined. The findings of this paper emphasise that a full compensation of the life cycle GHG emissions from materials is difficult to achieve through renewable energy, even with extensive use of PV panels, especially in a low-carbon grid situation as in Norway. A pathway strategy from zero-energy towards zero-emission buildings must therefore strongly focus on the materials’ embodied energy and emissions because low operational energy demand is already a regulatory priority in most countries

The mass flow and proposed management of bisphenol A in selected Norwegian waste streams

Current initiatives for waste-handling in a circular economy favor prevention and recycling over incineration or landfilling. However, the impact of such a transition on environmental emissions of contaminants like bisphenol A (BPA) during waste-handling is not fully understood. To address this, a material flow analysis (MFA) was constructed for selected waste categories in Norway, for which the amount recycled is expected to increase in the future; glass, vehicle, electronic, plastic and combustible waste. Combined, 92 tons/y of BPA are disposed of via these waste categories in Norway, with 98.5% associated with plastic and electronic waste. During the model year 2011, the MFA showed that BPA in these waste categories was destroyed through incineration (60%), exported for recycling into new products (35%), stored in landfills (4%) or released into the environment (1%). Landfilling led to the greatest environmental emissions (up to 13% of landfilled BPA), and incinerating the smallest (0.001% of incinerated BPA). From modelling different waste management scenarios, the most effective way to reduce BPA emissions are to incinerate BPA-containing waste and avoid landfilling it. A comparison of environmental and human BPA concentrations with CoZMoMAN exposure model estimations suggested that waste emissions are an insignificant regional source. Nevertheless, from monitoring studies, landfill emissions can be a substantial local source of BPA. Regarding the transition to a circular economy, it is clear that disposing of less BPA-containing waste and less landfilling would lead to lower environmental emissions, but several uncertainties remain regarding emissions of BPA during recycling, particularly for paper and plastics. Future research should focus on the fate of BPA, as well as BPA alternatives, in emerging reuse and recycling processes, as part of the transition to a circular economy.acceptedVersio