Environmental Sustainability Metrics Research Articles

Advancing green computing: Practices, strategies, and impact in modern software development for environmental sustainability

Advancing Green Computing: Practices, Strategies, and Impact in Modern Software Development for Environmental Sustainability explores the evolving landscape of green computing within the realm of software development, emphasizing the imperative for environmentally sustainable practices. In response to escalating environmental concerns, the computing industry is undergoing a paradigm shift towards reducing its carbon footprint and mitigating ecological impacts. This shift is particularly crucial in software development, given its pervasive influence on technological ecosystems. The review delves into the multifaceted dimensions of green computing, elucidating various practices and strategies that are instrumental in fostering environmental sustainability. From optimizing code efficiency to embracing energy-efficient computing architectures, the review underscores the diverse approaches available to software developers in minimizing resource consumption and carbon emissions. Furthermore, it examines the broader ramifications of these practices, emphasizing their potential to reshape the software industry's ecological footprint and contribute to global efforts for environmental conservation. Moreover, the review highlights the symbiotic relationship between green computing and modern software development methodologies. It elucidates how principles such as agile development and DevOps can be synergistically integrated with green computing practices to enhance sustainability throughout the software development lifecycle. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach that integrates environmental considerations into software design, development, and deployment processes, organizations can catalyze transformative changes towards a greener computing ecosystem. The review also investigates the tangible impact of green computing practices on environmental sustainability metrics. Through case studies and empirical analyses, it showcases the efficacy of various strategies in reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions, and electronic waste generation. Additionally, it discusses the economic and societal benefits accrued from adopting environmentally sustainable practices, ranging from cost savings to enhanced corporate social responsibility. Advancing Green Computing: Practices, Strategies, and Impact in Modern Software Development for Environmental Sustainability provides a comprehensive overview of the evolving landscape of green computing within the context of software development. It elucidates the myriad opportunities and challenges associated with fostering environmental sustainability in the computing industry and underscores the transformative potential of integrating green computing principles into modern software development practices.

Integrating solar cell technologies in microalgae facilities: Environmental sustainability metrics and indicators

All solar cell technologies have an impact on the environment. So, it is important to consider that the choice of solar cell technology can have a significant influence on the environmental sustainability metrics of microalgae-based processes and products. That's why this article is concerned with scrutinizing the environmental sustainability of integrating solar cell technologies in microalgae facilities. One of the focal aspects of this research is to provide insights to stakeholders in incorporating photovoltaics into their facilities. Four solar cell technologies, namely, single-crystalline silicon, multi-crystalline silicon, copper-indium-diselenide, and amorphous silicon were investigated. The results of the study confirm that the choice of solar cell technology can further reduce the metrics of environmental sustainability indicators of microalgae-based processes and products. The energy use from the lowest emitting technology versus the highest emitting technology can lead to a reduction in sustainability metrics of 1.13 to 9.04 times. It was also revealed, from weighting the results, that integrating microalgae production with amorphous silicon solar cell technology has a lower overall environmental impact, followed sequentially by copper-indium-diselenide, multi-crystalline silicon, and monocrystalline silicon. These results provide guidance for the environmentally conscious integration of photovoltaics in microalgae facilities.

Beyond tablets’ physical characteristics: Incorporating environmental sustainability metrics into the selection of lubricants for pharmaceutical tableting

Despite lubricants' indispensable roles in the production of pharmaceutical tablets. The selection of lubricant for pharmaceutical tableting has been largely empirical, where most tablets are produced using magnesium stearate (MgSt) as the lubricant. Even though many other lubricants (e.g., inorganic materials, polymers, surfactants) can deliver comparable lubrication efficiency as MgSt and often produce tablets with superior characteristics, these alternative lubricants remain not widely used. As the pharmaceutical industry strives to improve the environmental sustainability of its manufacturing, the present work aimed to employ environmental sustainability metrics as one of the decision tools (the other being the tablet's characteristics) in the lubricant selection process. Ibuprofen tablets prepared with four types of lubricants, i.e., MgSt, talc, polyethylene glycol (PEG 6000), and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), were studied. For each lubricant, environmental impacts of its production from raw materials were quantitatively characterized by life cycle assessment (LCA). Subsequently, LCA of ibuprofen tablets prepared using different lubricants was performed. Kilo-scale tableting experiments were carried out to generate material and energy flow data for the LCA. The results of the tableting experiments showed that ibuprofen tablets' characteristics were minimally affected by the type of lubricant used and all tablets could meet the criteria for friability, weight variation, drug content uniformity, and dissolution. The LCA results revealed that PEG 6000 had the best environmental sustainability profile, followed by talc, MgSt, and SDS. Owing to PEG 6000's superior sustainability profile, tablets prepared using PEG 6000 as the lubricant generated smaller environmental impacts than tablets prepared using MgSt. Therefore, the incorporation of environmental sustainability metrics into the lubricant selection methodology can improve the environmental sustainability of pharmaceutical tablet production.

Reconciling regionally-explicit nutritional needs with environmental protection by means of nutritional life cycle assessment

Nutritional life cycle assessment integrates nutrition into environmental life cycle analysis to comprehensively account for agri-food sustainability challenges including micronutrient deficiencies, nutrient diversity, and environmental impacts like climate change or freshwater scarcity, when compared to traditional life cycle assessment. We use regionally-explicit nutritional and environmental data at the food product and country levels to calculate environmental impacts, nutritional adequacy (e.g., Nutrient Rich Food Indices), and nutritional diversity (e.g., Rao's Quadratic Entropy). We first discuss various reasons for the differences in nutritional and environmental sustainability metrics for the various food products and countries. We then present nutritionally-invested environmental impacts. Here, because nutritional life cycle analysis is a nascent method, we explore the influence of methodological choice (e.g., capped versus uncapped metrics, energy standardization, contingent versus non-contingent measures) on results. We find using nutritionally-invested environmental impacts change the relative sustainability rankings of foods and countries, regional variability in nutritional profiles and environmental footprints of food products influence results, methodological choice alters nutritional metric scores, and food products can cover nutritional deficiencies in an environmentally-friendly manner. Our study contributes to research on the joint accounting of nutritional and environmental food system outcomes.

Asset tracking, condition visibility and sustainability using unmanned aerial systems in global logistics

The scale and scope of global logistics systems make real-time visibility of individual assets in global logistics systems difficult. Aggregating global logistics data to a manageable level where interruptions and disruptions can be anticipated or resolved is high on the wish list of global logistics managers and decision makers. Asset tracking and condition visibility in global supply chains is also difficult because few standards or metrics have been assessed in a supply chain, particularly when new technology is introduced, such as unmanned aerial systems in global supply chains. In this paper, we describe the integration of an unmanned aerial system in a global logistics system, and the metrics used to assess the integrated system. We highlight the importance of supply chain process, business impact, societal and environmental sustainability metrics, in addition to economic and supply chain performance metrics, in evaluating the integrated system.

Examining Environmental Sustainability Metrics—Nitrogen Balance

As companies and farmers seek to show progress towards sustainability goals, they need metrics to assess and document progression. Nitrogen balance—or N‐balance—is one frequently used metric to assess the sustainability of nitrogen management. Earn 0.5 CEUs in Nutrient Management by reading this article and taking the quiz at www.certifiedcropadviser.org/education/classroom/classes/854.

Ecosystem Services in Life Cycle Assessment while Encouraging Techno‐Ecological Synergies

SummaryLife cycle assessment (LCA) has enabled consideration of environmental impacts beyond the narrow boundary of traditional engineering methods. This reduces the chance of shifting impacts outside the system boundary. However, sustainability also requires that supporting ecosystems are not adversely affected and remain capable of providing goods and services for supporting human activities. Conventional LCA does not account for this role of nature, and its metrics are best for comparing alternatives. These relative metrics do not provide information about absolute environmental sustainability, which requires comparison between the demand and supply of ecosystem services (ES). Techno‐ecological synergy (TES) is a framework to account for ES, and has been demonstrated by application to systems such as buildings and manufacturing activities that have narrow system boundaries.This article develops an approach for techno‐ecological synergy in life cycle assessment (TES‐LCA) by expanding the steps in conventional LCA to incorporate the demand and supply of ecosystem goods and services at multiple spatial scales. This enables calculation of absolute environmental sustainability metrics, and helps identify opportunities for improving a life cycle not just by reducing impacts, but also by restoring and protecting ecosystems. TES‐LCA of a biofuel life cycle demonstrates this approach by considering the ES of carbon sequestration, air quality regulation, and water provisioning. Results show that for the carbon sequestration ecosystem service, farming can be locally sustainable but unsustainable at the global or serviceshed scale. Air quality regulation is unsustainable at all scales, while water provisioning is sustainable at all scales for this study in the eastern part of the United States.

Product social impact assessment

Whereas the business evolution of environmental sustainability metrics has advanced significantly over the past decade, social sustainability at product level is still relatively immature. Research continues to support the front runners on organisational sustainability, while workable solutions at product level have not yet been addressed sufficiently. Triggered by this imbalance, a group of experts from large companies decided to join forces, initiating the Roundtable for Product Social Metrics. Starting in early 2013, this group of companies aimed to (i) consolidate principles for product social sustainability assessment and harmonise approaches, (ii) align with other global initiatives and share with other companies and (iii) develop solutions for cross-cutting implementation issues. In order to be able to produce a comprehensive method for social impact assessment that provides enough flexibility for individual requirements, the Roundtable developed a method based on the approaches of the participant companies and external references such as the UNEP/SETAC Guidelines for Social Life-Cycle Assessment of Products and corporate level standards. Guiding principles were defined for the development of the method. The results of the first two phases of the Roundtable for Product Social Metrics are documented in a handbook, which proposes a practical method for organisations to assess the social impacts of a product or a service along its life cycle. The handbook outlines an aligned method for social impact assessment at a product level offering two approaches: quantitative and scale based. The method was developed to allow reasoned assessment of overall performance by including social topics and performance indicators that reflect positive and negative impacts of the product on three stakeholder groups: workers, consumers and local communities. Nineteen social topics are proposed, together with their individual performance indicators, including detailed definitions. Application examples and recommendations for the communication of results are also included in the handbook. The method can be applied in numerous scenarios, from understanding improvement opportunities and steering product development in different stages, to providing support for decision making and external communications. However, the method still has further potential for improvement, inter alia that the proposed indicators are not fully applicable to small farmers, SMEs and the self-employed, as well as that the indicators are mainly at inventory level. Furthermore, the proposed method is strongly dependent on the availability of data.

Energy intensity and environmental impact metrics of the back-end separation of ethylene plant by thermodynamic analysis

This study presents metrics of energy intensity and environmental impact of the back-end separation of ethylene plant consisting three interacting distillation columns by thermodynamic analysis. The objective is to explore the scope of reducing the energy for utilities and CO2 emissions. Thermodynamic analysis is carried out using the column targeting tool (CTT) to address the sustainability metrics of ‘Energy Intensity.’ CTT is based on the ‘Practical Near-Minimum Thermodynamic Condition’ representing a close to practical reversible column operation. Environmental impact metrics are estimated from the carbon tracking options. The carbon tracking are estimated by the CO2 emission data source of US-EPA-Rule-E9-5711 using natural gas as the primary fuel. The results show that the total reductions in exergy loss and the total hot and cold utility are around 44 and 10 %, respectively; the total reductions in carbon dioxide are around 14 %. These improvements lead to considerable reductions in the operating costs. Thermodynamic analysis helps estimating and improving the energy and environmental sustainability metrics and hence can lead to a more sustainable separation by distillation columns.

Energy and environmental sustainability assessment of a crude oil refinery by thermodynamic analysis

Summary This study presents the assessment of energy and environmental sustainability metrics for a crude oil refinery consisting of three distillation columns. The assessments of the current operation and the retrofits for possible improvements are suggested by the thermodynamic analysis and energy analyzer. The main objective is to explore the scope of reducing the thermal energy consumption and CO2 emissions for a more sustainable refinery operation. Thermodynamic analysis is carried out by using the thermal analysis capability of ‘column targeting tool’ to address the ‘energy intensity metrics’ and the ‘energy analyzer’ to design and improve the performance of the heat exchanger network system for process heat integration. Environmental pollution impact metrics are estimated from the ‘carbon tracking’ options with a selected CO2 emission data source of US-EPA-Rule-E9-5711 and using crude oil as a primary fuel source for the hot utilities. The results indicate that column targeting tool, energy analyzer, and carbon tracking can estimate the energy and environmental sustainability metrics of an existing design and determine the scope of considerable improvements for reducing the costs of thermal energy required and emissions of carbon dioxide in a crude oil refinery operation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Investigation of biochemical biorefinery sizing and environmental sustainability impacts for conventional bale system and advanced uniform biomass logistics designs

AbstractThe 2011 US Billion‐Ton Update1 estimates that there are enough agricultural and forest resources to sustainably provide enough biomass to displace approximately 30% of the country's current petroleum consumption. A portion of these resources are inaccessible at current cost targets with conventional feedstock supply systems because of their remoteness or low yields. Reliable analyses and projections of US biofuels production depend on assumptions about the supply system and biorefinery capacity, which, in turn, depend on economics, feedstock logistics, and sustainability. A cross‐functional team has examined optimal combinations of advances in feedstock supply systems and biorefinery capacities with rigorous design information, improved crop yield and agronomic practices, and improved estimates of sustainable biomass availability. Biochemical‐conversion‐to‐ethanol is analyzed for conventional bale‐based system and advanced uniform‐format feedstock supply system designs. The latter involves ‘pre‐processing’ biomass into a higher‐density, aerobically stable, easily transportable format that can supply large‐scale biorefineries. Feedstock supply costs, logistics and processing costs are analyzed and compared, taking into account environmental sustainability metrics. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

A new conceptual hierarchy for identifying environmental sustainability metrics

AbstractMetric identification has received growing attention as more alternatives become available for quantifying the sustainability‐oriented performance of a target human activity. Failure to tackle the diversity in these alternatives has given rise to significant difficulties in comparing and interpreting the assessment results obtained from using various metrics. This paper explores some bottlenecks in identifying “appropriate” environmental sustainability metrics that specifically meet the needs of a sustainability assessor. A new conceptual hierarchy “stressor–status–effect–integrality–well‐being” (SSEIW) for metric classification is proposed. This hierarchy categorizes the full range of metrics into five levels, each of which measures the interested environmental outcomes in a different manner. This paper shows that the proposed hierarchy can be applied within the framework of life‐cycle assessment (LCA), which provides a promising solution to “best‐practice” metric identification as well as expanding the LCA applications to the sustainability field. © 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2004

Urban Environmental Sustainability Metrics: A Provisional Set

Designing or transforming urban areas into 'sustainable cities' is becoming an increasingly common vision. It is, however, an unrealizable vision without agreement on how to determine whether a sustainable city vision has been fulfilled. In this paper we define a provisional set of urban environmental sustainability metrics, chosen to cover the spectrum of issues related to urban areas, and to be drawn from data that are customarily available. We devise a display technique to communicate efficiently the results of a metrics evaluation to a variety of stakeholders. The approach is illustrated by applying the metrics set to Vancouver, Canada, an urban area that has expended considerable effort toward achieving its own environmental vision.