On April 22nd 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Spearhead by Senator Nelson, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the first Earth Day protests forced environmental protection onto the national political agenda and led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passing of key environmental legislation.
Today, Earth Day is widely recognised as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behaviour and provoke policy changes. Now, the fight for a clean environment continues with increasing urgency, as the devastating effects of climate change become more and more apparent every day.
2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. To acknowledge this milestone, Elsevier presents an open access special issue devoted to sustainability. Covering a range of topics, including energy, food science, transportation and waste, this curated collection of 50 journal articles and book chapters demonstrates the dependability and care that trusted scientific research gives our society
Sustainability at Elsevier is embedded across the entire organisation - internally and externally. By investing in world-class information, partnerships, technology and people, we equip communities with the knowledge that drives critical decision making and innovation to tackle the world's greatest problems.
This review focuses on how culture can complicate and impede attempts at promoting more efficient, more sustainable, and often more affordable forms of mobility as well as energy use in homes and buildings. In simpler terms: it illustrates the cultural barriers to a low-carbon, low-energy future across 28 countries. Rather than focus on energy supply, it deals intently with energy end-use, demand, and consumption.
Electricity systems based on renewables have an increasing demand for flexibility. This paper considers the potential of power-to-gas to provide flexibility and enhance system integration of renewables. Existing research on power-to-gas typically analyses the system effects of a predetermined power-to-gas unit without endogenising the investment decision. Moreover, insights related to market and portfolio effects of power-to-gas are rare. To this end this work presents a stochastic electricity market model.
The planetary boundaries framework proposes quantified guardrails to human modification of global environmental processes that regulate the stability of the planet and has been considered in sustainability science, governance, and corporate management. However, the planetary boundary for human freshwater use has been critiqued as a singular measure that does not reflect all types of human interference with the complex global water cycle and Earth System.
This book chapter addresses goals 7, 11 and 12 by introduces the main technologies available for recovery of chemicals and fuels from plastic waste, enabling cities and communities to become more sustainable and responsible by transforming this waste into a source of affordable energy.
Water-quality disasters occur frequently worldwide and do not necessarily occur only in underdeveloped world. Detailed water-quality evaluations can help prevent occurrence of some of these disasters.This book chapter addresses goals 3, 6 and 14 by discussing our vulnerability to water disasters to help us avoid some of them in the future.
This book chapter addresses goals 6 and 12 by providing an overview of water resources in Europe and the associated anthropogenic and natural pressures. It further introduces the main instrument of the European Union (the Water Framework Directive) initiated as a response to the expected water crisis.
This book chapter addresses goals 12, 14 and 15 by discussing the debate surrounding the role of biodegradable plastics in solving plastic solid waste accumulation and assisting the transition toward a circular economy, in turn encouraging more sustainable communities and responsible consumption.
This book chapter addresses goals 13 and 15 by summarising studies carried out to date aimed at estimating the potential impact of the projected global warming by the end of this century on the Pantepui biota, particularly on vascular plants.
Approximately 1 billion people currently live in informal settlements, primarily in urban areas in low- and middle-income countries. Informal settlements are defined by poor-quality houses or shacks built outside formal laws and regulations. Most informal settlements lack piped water or adequate provision for sanitation, drainage, and public services. Many are on dangerous sites because their inhabitants have a higher chance of avoiding eviction. This paper considers how to build resilience to the impacts of climate change in informal settlements.
This book chapter addresses goals 11, 12, and 15 by showing that human population growth is not the only matter for consideration in ecological engineering. What matters for the future is not only how many people there will be, but what they will do in their everyday life; this will impact the life systems surrounding them and how equipped they will be to face emerging challenges. In coming decades, the survival and well-being of humans and the security of environmental resources will continue to be challenged by rapid population growth.
This book chapter addresses goals 7 and 9 by looking at the future plan for nuclear energy to contribute to a cleaner energy mix, considering sustainable development, globalisation and climate change.
This book chapter addresses goals 15 and 17 by providing an overview of educational programming used across cheetah conservation organizations, including considerations for designing, implementing, and evaluating such programs for success.
This book chapter addresses goals 6, 9, and 12 and 14 by presenting the feasibility of traditional and nature-based in situ treatment processes for beverage effluents addressing the environmental problems associated with its management and providing the relevant socioeconomic and environmental values.
This book chapter addresses goals 2 and 12 by analysing food systems sustainability through the lens of the interrelated implications and impacts of FLW on production and consumption.
This book chapter addresses goals 9 and 12 by describing recycling methods including primary, mechanical, chemical and quaternary, to create new valuable products from plastic wastes and keep them out of landfill.
Trees, and their derivative products, have been used by societies around the world for thousands of years. Contemporary construction of tall buildings from timber, in whole or in part, suggests a growing interest in the potential for building with wood at a scale not previously attainable. As wood is the only significant building material that is grown, we have a natural inclination that building in wood is good for the environment. But under what conditions is this really the case?
This book chapter addresses goals 9, 10, and 11 by summarising the conditions, trends, and implications of sustainable urban mobility solutions in China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Israel, and Morocco.
The new European Commission plans to raise the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target from 40% towards 55% by 2030 and make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Achieving this will require accelerated energy efficiency measures, deeper electrification of sectors currently consuming conventional fuels and the deployment of more renewables, faster. This opinion article looks specifically at the role of photovoltaics (PV), based on scenarios from the Commission's 2018 long-term strategy (LTS) for energy and climate.
Pathways towards a defossilated sustainable power system for West Africa within the time horizon of 2015–2050 is researched, by applying linear optimisation modelling to determine the cost optimal generation mix to meet the demand based on assumed costs and technologies in 5-year intervals. Six scenarios were developed, which aimed at examining the impact of various policy constraints such as cross-border electricity trade and greenhouse gas emissions costs.
A possibility of developing an environmental-friendly photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) solar panel, which can shut high temperature radiation within a panel box, was experimentally confirmed. The panel has a decompression-boiling heat collector, which can absorb heat from the PV module and can keep the air and the cover glass inside the panel box at lower temperature by using lower boiling temperature of working fluid under vacuum condition. The panel also has an emboss-processed cover glass, which can totally reflect the high temperature heat radiation from the PV module within the panel box.
Global warming and the acute domestic air pollution in China have necessitated transition to a sustainable energy system away from coal-dominated energy production. Through a systematic review of the national policy documents, this study investigates the policy mix adopted by the Chinese government to facilitate its energy transition and how that policy mix has evolved between 1981 and 2020. The chronological analysis emphasizes two dimensions of temporal changes in the policy mix: (1) changes in the policy intensity and density, and (2) the shift in policy instrument combinations.
Reductions in carbon emissions have been a focus of the power sector. However, the sector itself is vulnerable to the impacts of global warming. Extreme weather events and gradual changes in climate variables can affect the reliability, cost, and environmental impacts of the energy supply. This paper analyzed the interplay between CO2 mitigation attempts and adaptations to climate change in the power sector using the Long-range Energy Alternative Planning System (LEAP) model.
Various studies have shown that maritime sector needs increased use of zero emission vessels in service by 2030 in order to achieve an absolute reduction in CO2 emissions of 50% by 2050 (consistent with a 2 °C pathway). These vessels, with operational emissions containing zero or negligible greenhouse gas share, would need to represent a significant portion of newbuilds from that point onwards.
There is a wide array of biomass utilisation pathways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The characteristic of biomass, the demand for products, and the local constraints determine the sustainability of utilisation. Generic principles and criteria can be applied to the analysis of specific instances. This work develops a decision-making tool for determining the most sustainable use of biomass for carbon management.
In this paper, an integrated blockchain-based energy management platform is proposed that optimizes energy flows in a microgrid whilst implementing a bilateral trading mechanism. Physical constraints in the microgrid are respected by formulating an Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem, which is combined with a bilateral trading mechanism in a single optimization problem. The Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) is used to decompose the problem to enable distributed optimization and a smart contract is used as a virtual aggregator.
This article shows that research in the design of 100% renewable energy systems in scientific articles is fairly new but has gained increasing attention in recent years. In total, 180 articles published since 2004 have been identified and analysed. Many of these articles have a predominant focus on the electricity sector. However, an increasing number of studies apply a cross-sectoral holistic approach on the entire energy system.
This paper attempts to investigate the impact of economic growth and CO2 emissions on energy consumption for a global panel of 58 countries using dynamic panel data model estimated by means of the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for the period 1990-2012. We also estimate this relationship for three regional panels; namely, from Europe and North Asia, Latin America and Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan, North African and Middle Eastern. The empirical evidence indicates significant positive impact of CO2 emissions on energy consumption for four global panels.
This viewpoint reviews key assessments from the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C and examines the implications for the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). Disaster risks are expected to be higher at 1.5 °C and continue to increase at 2 °C. Current and future disaster risk management particularly those that deal with the impacts of coastal flooding, heat-related health impacts, sea level rise, and forest fires are to be strengthened, particularly the Arctic, Caribbean, SIDS and low-lying coastal areas are particularly at risk.
The UN has adopted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030; SFDRR) in March 2015 and the member countries agreed to shift from disaster management to disaster risk management. The SFDRR is in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; September 2015). In 2016, the UNISDR together with partner organizations has prepared roadmap for mainstreaming Science and Technology in SFDRR. Out of four priority areas, this paper focuses on the appraisal of challenges in SFDRR priority 1 “understanding disaster risk” through the lens of science, technology and innovations.
The “build back better” (BBB) approach to disaster recovery was first introduced in 2006 by the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, former US President William Clinton. In 2015, BBB became the second half of Priority 4 of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, in recognition of its widespread use and adoption among disaster risk management practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction encourages investment in innovation and technology development in disaster risk management. However, needs for science and technology inputs are unmet, and there is a lack of policy making that is based on science and evidence. This paper identified three key issues that could help overcome these barriers: networking, coproduction of knowledge, and a stronger role played by academia.
Air pollution and climate change are key global challenges for cities and both have large impacts on human health and economic development. Although there are many long term opportunities to address these issues with integrated policies, the immediate needs of addressing air pollution and climate change mitigation are not the same for all countries in the short run.
Municipal advisory committees are becoming increasingly influential in guiding decision-making processes that address climatic issues. According to the Adaptigation Institutionalization Framework (included in the recent IPCC report), the implementation of such participatory structures is vital for the effective, joint institutionalization of climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim. Against this background, this paper tests the Adaptigation Framework using the example of municipal advisory committees in Germany.
As global temperatures continue to rise, questions about infrastructure capacity to keep up with energy demand are increasingly germane. Energy demand is mediated by several structural and environmental conditions, though we have a limited understanding about the role of differences in local ambient temperatures as a predictor for energy demand. This study assesses the effects of residential building structure, socio-demographics, and ambient temperature conditions of a neighborhood to overall energy expenditures of a household.
Does humanity's future lie in the ocean? As demand for resources continues to grow and land-based sources decline, expectations for the ocean as an engine of human development are increasing. Claiming marine resources and space is not new to humanity, but the extent, intensity, and diversity of today's aspirations are unprecedented. We describe this as the blue acceleration—a race among diverse and often competing interests for ocean food, material, and space.
Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity. To address these problems, we develop Green New Deal energy roadmaps for 143 countries. The roadmaps call for a 100% transition of all-purpose business-as-usual (BAU) energy to wind-water-solar (WWS) energy, efficiency, and storage by 2050 with at least 80% by 2030. Our studies on grid stability find that the countries, grouped into 24 regions, can match demand exactly from 2050 to 2052 with 100% WWS supply and storage. We also derive new cost metrics.
Approximately 70% of the aquatic-based production of animals is fed aquaculture, whereby animals are provided with high-protein aquafeeds. Currently, aquafeeds are reliant on fish meal and fish oil sourced from wild-captured forage fish. However, increasing use of forage fish is unsustainable and, because an additional 37.4 million tons of aquafeeds will be required by 2025, alternative protein sources are needed.
A new threat now confronts the Amazon in the form of a massive infrastructure program, the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, or IIRSA. This article presents results of a projection analysis showing that IIRSA could push the Amazonian forest past a “tipping point,” replacing it with tropical savanna. Such an event would degrade biodiversity, reduce carbon storage, and harm continental agriculture, dependent on moisture transport from forest-based rainfall recycling.
Conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in natural environments requires careful management choices. However, common methods of evaluating the impact of conservation interventions can have contextual shortcomings. Here, we make a call for counterfactual thinking—asking the question “what would have happened in the absence of an intervention?”—with the support of rigorous evaluation approaches and more thoughtful consideration of human dimensions and behavior.
The potential of electron-donating capability in methoxy groups of antioxidant containing protein (ACAP) as organic catalyst is restricted by its low isoelectric point. The goal of this study is to construct endure ACAP based metal-free organic catalyst for hydrogen production from electrolysis of noodle wastewater. The ACAP was coated thermomechanically on PVC sheet and its performance was tested during electrolysis of noodle wastewater. The morphological analysis, phase analysis, and elemental analysis of coated materials have shown a simultaneous pattern with electrolysis performances.
This book chapter addresses goals 1, 8 and 15 by focusing on rainfall index, which links insurance payouts to historical rainfall data from reliable weather gauging stations, and how it relates to crop and livestock losses. The system works in such a way that if the data shows that the rainfall amount is below the threshold, the insurance pays out. If implemented effectively, it has the potential to revolutionise access to formal insurance by smallholders.
This book chapter addresses goals 6, 8 and 13 by documenting experiences that many dryland agricultural regions can expect to encounter in coming decades as changing climate, demographic characteristics, and socioeconomic factors take hold.