Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

Complementing emergy evaluation and life cycle assessment for enlightening the environmental benefits of using engineered timber in the building sector

Engineered timber can represent a great opportunity to mitigate the large impacts due to the global building sector. However, the most applied environmental assessment methodologies such a life cycle assessment (LCA) might show limited advantages when comparing the impact on climate change of buildings made of traditional materials, such as concrete and steel, and building based on engineered timber. This work proposes emergy evaluation (EME) as a complementary environmental assessment methodology. By expanding the boundaries of the assessment, EME captures input flows and related features, especially in terms of renewability, that are overlooked in LCA. LCA and EME were applied to two identically modeled buildings composed of either only traditional materials or engineered timber as their replacement. EME reveals the higher sustainability level of engineered timber compared to traditional materials in the building sector, capturing larger environmental benefits compared to LCA. Ultimately, the robustness of the results is tested through a comparative sensitivity analysis performed for three geographic scenarios, different energy use scenarios, and different transport distances.

Biodiversity and Constrained Information Dynamics in Ecosystems: A Framework for Living Systems

The increase in ecosystem biodiversity can be perceived as one of the universal processes converting energy into information across a wide range of living systems. This study delves into the dynamics of living systems, highlighting the distinction between ex post adaptation, typically associated with natural selection, and its proactive counterpart, ex ante adaptability. Through coalescence experiments using synthetic ecosystems, we (i) quantified ecosystem stability, (ii) identified correlations between some biodiversity indexes and the stability, (iii) proposed a mechanism for increasing biodiversity through moderate inter-ecosystem interactions, and (iv) inferred that the information carrier of ecosystems is species composition, or merged genomic information. Additionally, it was suggested that (v) changes in ecosystems are constrained to a low-dimensional state space, with three distinct alteration trajectories-fluctuations, rapid environmental responses, and long-term changes-converging into this state space in common. These findings suggest that daily fluctuations may predict broader ecosystem changes. Our experimental insights, coupled with an exploration of living systems' information dynamics from an ecosystem perspective, enhance our predictive capabilities for natural ecosystem behavior, providing a universal framework for understanding a broad spectrum of living systems.

Evaluation of urban metabolism assessment methods through SWOT analysis and analytical hierocracy process

The interconnection of urbanization trends and environmental pressures, are due to the rising demand for resource consumption, waste production and greenhouses gas emissions. Taking into consideration the massive reduction of natural resources, the deprivation of the life quality and the climate change, the scientific community indicates the necessity to emphasis and understand the relationship between cities and the environment as a dynamic concept. Consequently, cities are facing the challenge to implement alternative strategies towards more sustainable management of urban resources. This research aims to shed light on the concept of urban metabolism, the methods that are been used to gauge urban metabolism (i.e Emergy Analysis, Material Flow Analysis, Ecological Footprint etc.), as well as the assessment of the proposed methodologies through SWOT analysis and Analytical Hierocracy Process, considering multi-criteria analysis and how those reflect to Circular Economy and European Green Deal Strategy. The results showed that, the existing methodologies needs refreshment to cover the needs for the cities of tomorrow and a new hybrid approach which will include new set of Key Performed Indicators is essential. Furthermore, the results could serve as a beneficial reference point for policy makers, consultants, rural developers as the new hybrid approach can be used to measure and assess the level of metabolism in one area in order to prevent future expansion.

Evaluation and optimization of a circular economy model integrating planting and breeding based on the coupling of emergy analysis and life cycle assessment

The sustainable development of agriculture is facing problems such as high resource consumption and serious environmental pollution. The development of the circular economy model integrating planting and breeding (CEMIPB) has become an effective way to realize the sustainable development of agriculture. Due to the great difference of natural resource attributes in different regions of China, CEMIPB shows diverse characteristics on the whole. Based on this, this paper constructs a coupling model based on emergy analysis (EMA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) called EM-LCA model and conducts an empirical analysis using a typical CEMIPB in Fujian Province, China, as a case. By comparing the results of the EM-LCA and EMA models, the former effectively compensates for the deficiencies of the latter in terms of economic and environmental impact assessment, and the evaluation results can better reflect the actual situation of the system. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is introduced to identify key processes and substances. Based on the reduce-reuse-recycle (3R) principle, several optimization suggestions, such as reducing the input of corn and veterinary drugs, are put forward. The construction of the aforementioned methodology system can provide a new perspective for research in similar fields and provide a scientific basis for local government decision making.

Emergy as a Tool to Evaluate Ecosystem Services: A Systematic Review of the Literature

The objective of this paper is to present a review of current research on the valuation of ecosystem services, using emergy evaluation methodology (EME). A bibliometric analysis and a systematic review were carried out between 2000 and 2020, using all of Web of Science database subfields that collected 187 papers, selected through the keywords “emergy” and “ecosystem services”. In the second part of the research, we carried out a new search on Web of Science of the 187 initial articles produced, with the words “valuation” and “economic”, in order to analyze those directly related to the evaluation of ecosystem services. The results showed that the EME method is an effective tool to evaluate ecosystem services, since it relates economic and ecological aspects in the evaluations. The research also indicated that the use of isolated methods does not appear to be the most appropriate solution, and that emergy used in combination with other methodologies can be used to obtain more accurate and comprehensive results to evaluate natural resources.