Poor Economic Performance Research Articles

Reconciling retrofitting with IEQ to maintain energy, environmental and economic performance: A methodological approach for generic office buildings

Office building retrofitting may instigate significant reductions in energy consumption and there is growing recognition that buildings’ energy, economic and environmental performances (the 3Es) must be considered in tandem. This study aims at maintaining the 3Es when retrofitting office buildings towards nZEB standards. A simulation-based methodology was designed consisting of three generic building forms describing common office building geometries constructed between 1952 and 1980 in Egypt; linear, square with courtyard and L-shaped. Each accommodated for open, closed and semi-closed office layouts as recommended in architectural manuals, and was oriented in four directions, giving 36 base cases. A combined retrofitting strategy was applied and both base cases and retrofitted cases were simulated in DesignBuilder using Cairo weather data, which was validated indirectly through real measurements using preliminary simulations that retrieved statistical significance.Results were analyzed for each of the 3Es by comparing base cases to post-retrofitting performances. Results revealed that not all retrofitted cases that demonstrate acceptable environmental performance and/or energy-efficiency are cost-optimal. However, the following patterns were deduced. Square courtyard buildings yield superior performances, and L-shapes tend to perform outside acceptable ranges. Closed plans demonstrate superior energy and environmental performance but poorer economic performance. 17 out of 36 retrofitted cases achieved nZEB, illustrating the potential of implementing nZEB in Egypt. This work may be considered prototypical, encouraging a national office building retrofitting process toward nZEB. However, implications extend beyond the national level, as results may be used to support a kick-off retrofitting programme based on basic office building geometries.

Debating Environmental Change and Conflict in the Global South: Learning from Selected Cases in Africa

The crux of this paper centres on the dynamics of environmental change and ensuing conflict. This review paper accentuates the various theoretical underpinnings regarding environmental change and conflict. Particular reference was given to countries in the Global South because they are the most affected by environmental change-related conflict. It was established in this paper that population growth is positively correlated to militarised interstate disputes, although this is not always the case. Again, there is a lack of coding in current conflict dates, to the extent that it is often complicated to ascertain whether specific conflict trends can be traced back to environmental change. Conflict data usually use data sets from the environment-conflict nexus that only capture high-intensity conflict events, which often ignore low-scale conflict within states and districts. Thirdly, the averaging conflict would likely lead to biassed academic and policy conclusions. Fourthly, poor economic performances, either persistent or temporary, have the likelihood of causing violent conflicts. For instance, a land invasion in Brazil occurred immediately after adverse economic shocks.Further environmental degradation can cause migration by perpetuating migration. A significant obstacle encountered in the field of Risk perception literature pertains to the tendency of scholars to heavily depend on excessively deterministic explanations when conceptualising the concept of resource scarcity. Once more, the assessment of environmental change is exclusively based on small variations in temperature and precipitation. The examples examined in this study were selected from diverse geographical regions, encompassing East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa. In agro-pastoral West Africa, the frequency of conflicts is on the rise. As a result, policymakers and multilateral funders are increasingly shouldering the responsibility due to the ongoing growth of populations and the changing environmental conditions. There seems to be a correlation between environmental degradation and conflict; however, the relationship between these two is not always apparent or might be the other way around. Based on current theorising and available empirical evidence, it remains debatable whether environmental degradation increases the risk of violent conflict or whether conflict is leading to natural resource deterioration.

The Pigmentocracy of Executive Approval

We advance a theory of pigmentocratic executive approval that accounts for both skin color-based group attachments and deviations in skin tone between citizens and leaders. We argue that such deviations will decrease approval most strongly for those lighter in complexion than the incumbent. We further argue that individuals will most strongly punish incumbents for poor economic performance when their skin tone is lighter than the executive’s. To test our theory, we assess the skin tone of dozens of leaders from the Americas, and we couple the resulting measure with mass survey data from the leaders’ countries. Our findings demonstrate that executive approval throughout the Americas replicates patterns of “pigmentocracy”—inequalities and hierarchies that privilege lighter skin tones.

Contextual Sources of Euroscepticism in Eastern Central and Western Europe: The Role of Peripheral Regions

Abstract This paper examines how regional contextual factors influence Eurosceptic voting in Eastern Central and Western Europe. It employs a theoretical framework of multidimensional regional periphery and relative deprivation to explore how economic, spatial and demographic factors can generate collective feelings of deprivation among regional inhabitants. This relative deprivation is supposed to manifest as political discontent expressed at the EU level, either by attributing responsibility for regional peripherality to the EU or by blaming national institutions, potentially spilling over to the EU level. Based on an integrated dataset encompassing economic, spatial and demographic indicators as well as election data from the European election 2019 for 1169 NUTS 3 regions within the EU, the findings support the hypotheses. Poor economic performance in a region, relative to the national average and historical levels, increases Eurosceptic voting, and the impact of an ageing population is significant. Spatial infrastructure conditions have minimal direct but moderating effects: Eurosceptic parties benefit more from economic underperformance, if the infrastructure is also poorly developed. The paper further shows differences in cue -taking between Eastern Central Europe and Western Europe suggesting that citizens in Eastern Central Europe consider the EU more often as saviour than as creator of regional deprivation. The paper underscores the importance of regional contextual factors and infrastructural effects, and highlights the need to avoid one-size-fits-all explanations for Euroscepticism in Eastern Central and Western Europe.

The good, the bad, and the not-so-ugly of credit booms?: capital allocation and financial constraints

We provide international empirical evidence that periods of rapid expansion in credit—credit booms—lead to both a relaxation of financial constraints and a worsening of capital allocation. These two effects are related, suggesting a more prominent role for the investor sentiment views of the credit cycle. Firms more likely to be financially constrained because of their size, industry, or country experience stronger misallocation in booms. At the macro level, credit booms with higher capital misallocation result in a higher probability of experiencing a banking crisis and poor economic and financial performance after the boom ends.

Effects of a Self-Pressurized Injection Strategy on the Formation of a Stratified Mixture and the Combustion of an Aviation Kerosene Piston Engine

Abstract The aviation kerosene piston engine (AKPE) is the main power system for small- and medium-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Conventional AKPEs use carburetors or port fuel injection (PFI) as fuel supply, resulting in poor cold start performance and difficulty in forming an economically efficient stratified mixture. In addition, two-stroke AKPEs using carburetors or PFI have serious scavenging losses. These reasons lead to the poor economic performance of conventional AKPEs. Direct injection (DI) can be controlled through precise injection timing to form a stratified mixture. The combustion of stratified mixtures in engines can effectively improve the fuel economy and endurance flight time characteristics of UAVs. As a special DI injector, self-pressurized injectors have great potential in the power field of UAVs. To effectively apply self-pressurized injectors on UAV engines and improve the economy, an engine model and a self-pressurized injector spray model are established and verified in this paper. The single injection strategy and segmented injection strategy for forming stratified mixtures are explored, and the combustion performance is studied. The main conclusions are as follows: the optimal installation angle of the injector is 15 deg, which yields excellent results in the formation of the mixture at this angle. When the fuel injection quantity is small, utilizing a single injection strategy combined with delaying the end of the injection phase (EOIP) can form a stratified mixture. Reducing the angle difference between the EOIP and the ignition timing can improve the power and economy. As the fuel injection quantity is large, a stratified mixture can be formed through two-stage injection. When the fuel injection ratio is 4:1, the uniformity of the mixture distribution in the combustion chamber is significantly improved. Adjusting the second EOIP between a 35 deg crank angle (CA) before top dead center (BTDC) and a 30 deg CA BTDC can achieve a stratified mixture with good economy and power performance.

Techno-economic-environmental performance of different system configuration for combined heating and power based on organic Rankine cycle and direct/indirect heating

Low system efficiency and poor economic performance of geothermal driven organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is serious due to standalone power generation and high initial investment cost. Based on ORC, four combined heating and power (CHP) systems are proposed to improve the above problem, including with the geothermal tailwater (GT-ORC-CHP), cooling water (CW-ORC-CHP), geothermal tailwater and cooling water (GTCW-ORC-CHP) as well as heat pump (HP) is added into GTCW-ORC-CHP (HP-ORC-CHP). Techno-economic performances are analyzed and compared. The results show that the GT-ORC-CHP has better power generation performance, with the highest net power output of 2349.67 kW and wider application range. The GTCW-ORC-CHP and HP-ORC-CHP have advantages in the heat supply performance and overall economic performance. The high geothermal water temperature, evaporation temperature of ORC, and evaporation temperature of HP have had a positive multi-objective optimization effect on the net power output (Wnet) and levelized energy cost (LEC) of each system. The multi-objective optimization indicates that the GTCW-ORC-CHP is suggested as the geothermal energy cascade utilization method from the perspectives of the exergy efficiency and total cost rate, and the cost and exergy destruction of the heat exchangers occupies the largest share in each system, all accounting for over about 80%.

Adequacy of iodized salt and its associated factors among households in the Bahir Dar Zuria district, Northwest Ethiopia, 2022.

The inadequacy of iodine in salt is the a contributing factor behind lack of awareness and poor economic performance in developing countries. To address the issue of iodine deficiency, universal salt iodization has been implemented globally. Nevertheless, it is imperative to closely monitor the sufficiency of iodine in salts to achieve its intended objective at the household level in the Bahir Dar Zuria district. To assess the adequacy of iodized salt and its associated factors among households in the Bahir Dar Zuria district, Northwest Ethiopia. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from May to June 2022 among households in Bahir Dar Zuria district. The data were gathered from 825 households that were chosen using a multistage sampling process. Iodometric titration was used to assess the amount of iodine in salt. The data were gathered using a structured questionnaire that was administered by an interviewer. For data entry and analysis, EpiData version 3.01 and SPSS version 25.0 were used, respectively. To evaluate the association between explanatory factors and the outcome variable, binary logistic regression was conducted, and significance was determined at alpha 0.05. This study analyzed a total of 825 households. Of these, only 384 [46.5, 95% CI, 43.5-50.5%] households had adequately iodized salt at home. Age increase of 1 year [AOR = 1.04, 95% CI = 1.02-1.06], being an urban resident [AOR = 3.18, 95% CI = 1.84-5.48], diploma and above educational attainment [AOR = 3.74, 95% CI = 1.99-7.02], checking salt by asking the seller [AOR = 2.21, 95% CI = 1.26-3.88], storing salts in closed containers [AOR = 1.57, 95% CI = 1.13-2.19], and storing salts in a dry and cool area [AOR = 2.72, 95% CI =1.37-5.42] were associated with the adequacy of iodized salt at the household level. The percentage of households in the district (46.5%) that had enough iodized salt in their homes is still extremely low and falls short of the targeted level for the country. At the household level, adequate iodized salt was found to be associated with age, place of residence, level of education, checking salt iodization while purchasing, place of salt storage, and cover use for salt containers. Therefore, increasing the accessibility of iodized salt at the household level is essential.

Comprehensive performance investigation of a novel solar-assisted liquid air energy storage system with different operating modes in different seasons

Recently, many researchers have put a spotlight on solar-assisted liquid air energy storage (LAES) system for its cleanliness and large storage capacity. However, the energy efficiencies of such systems are relatively low, resulting in poor economic performance. In addition, very few studies are conducted on the performance of such systems with multi-generation output. Thus, a novel solar-assisted LAES system with different operating modes (LAES-S-D) in different seasons is proposed, which fully utilizes the solar heat and air compression heat to supply cooling/heating/power/domestic hot water in different seasons to meet the energy requirements of users in different seasons. The waste heat recovery/utilization potential of the system is analyzed from the perspective of the energy cascade utilization. Energy, exergy, techno-economic and exergoenvironmental performances are deeply investigated. In contrast with the reference system, the energy efficiency is improved from 0.5101 to 0.5561 (transition seasons), 0.7849 (summer) and 0.8674 (winter), respectively. The net present value is improved by 324.63 million $, the levelized cost of energy is reduced by 0.0774 $/kWh and the dynamic payback time is decreased by 4.87 years.

A new model for the economic impact assessment of large-scale and deep open-pit mines

ABSTRACT This study focuses on examining economic impacts associated with deep and large-scale open-pit mining operations, which are often neglected in environmental impact assessments. Using Z-Fuzzy Delphi AHP and scenario-based techniques, 28 economic impacts were classified into seven categories and evaluated for the Sungun Copper mine in northwest Iran. Results indicated that socioeconomic factors had the highest weight (21.4%), while monetary factors had the lowest weight (7.5%). The economic sustainability score for the SCM was calculated to be 2.111, indicating poor economic performance. This research highlights the importance of considering economic impacts in mining operations for sustainable development.

UO2-fueled microreactors: Near-term solutions to emerging markets

We perform a scoping study of seven classes of microreactor technologies with a diverse set of coolants, that is, heat pipes, sodium, lead–bismuth, helium, FLiBe, organic fluid and light water. A point design is developed for each reactor class under a consistent set of assumptions about road transportability, irradiation cycle length, passive decay heat removal and reactivity control. All reactors have a thermal spectrum and use low-enriched (≤5%) uranium dioxide fuel, which is readily available and inexpensive. Mature moderator materials, in-core structural and cladding alloys were selected in this study including graphite, Zircaloy and stainless steel 316H. We compare the economic potential of these point designs according to a set of figures of merit including the cost of fuel, coolant, major equipment, instrumentation and control (I&C) systems as well as the complexity of operations and maintenance (O&M).The results of our analyses confirm that economies of scale work against microreactors competitiveness, i.e., relatively small absolute costs become high costs per unit energy generated because of the low power output. We find that all designs have very high fuel costs because of the relatively low achievable burnup, and high I&C costs (in particular for the reactor protection system), compared to traditional large light water reactors. Coolant costs are also notably high for the lead–bismuth cooled, organic-cooled and especially FLiBe-cooled systems. The constraints adopted in this study limited the heat pipe reactor’s operating temperature to 650 °C, which resulted in low core power density and low electric power output, thus yielding a poor economic performance. When technology maturity, operating experience, O&M complexity and our estimated costs are holistically taken into account, we judge that the most promising designs examined in this study are (in no particular order) the Na-cooled reactor, the HTGR, the organic-cooled reactor and the water-cooled reactor.

Can Structural Indicators of Trade Explain Why EU Candidate Countries Are Integrating Slowly?

ABSTRACT The paper discusses whether “enlargement fatigue,” slowing down the European Union integration process of 6 Candidate Countries (C6), can be explained by the poor economic and trade performance of those economies, especially in trading with the EU. We comprehensively analyzed the merchandise trade of those economies with the EU in 2007–2018 using numerous quantitative techniques and applying a very high level of data disaggregation. First, the value of similarity indicators between the C6’s export and EU import structures and indices of intra-industry trade was calculated. Then we controlled for additional factors: the changes in C6’s exports (imports) to the EU through shares of goods at higher levels of processing, as well as their export (import) specialization. The conclusion is that the weak trade performances of C6 are not the cause of enlargement fatigue, as these economies saw moderate structural improvements in their trade with the EU.

The Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on CO2 Emissions in the Ten Countries with the Highest Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

The environmental pollution during the COVID-19 crisis has declined dramatically due to quarantines that have severely reduced transport and industry but has had little effect on the steady rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Through the Paris Agreement, countries are working to reduce the emissions of these pollutants, for example, by burning fossil fuels. These greenhouse gases trap heat near the earth's surface and raise the temperature. This global warming threatens global food resources. In times of corona crisis and environmental pollution, especially in countries with the highest CO2 emissions, governance is a key factor that explains the poor economic, social, and environmental performance of many countries. Governance plays an important role in controlling these crises. In this study, the World Bank's governance indicators have been used to examine the relationship between governance and economic performance and its impact on CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 outbreak period. Also, the Tobit panel model with a limited-dependent model from 2011 to 2020 has been used. Several economic factors and governance variables are also considered. Given the negative relationship between governance and CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 outbreak, the role of governance in reducing environmental pollution is emphasized, and it is shown that policymakers can take appropriate measures by implementing good governance and enforcing the right laws to control the corona epidemic and also reduce carbon emissions in the long run.

Ownership Structure and Financial Performance of Listed Manufacturing Firms in Nigeria: Moderating Role of Board Diversity.

The financial performance of listed Manufacturing firms in Nigeria has been deteriorated considerably. There are other issues that could lead to the poor economic performance but the researchers are explicitly interested in investigating the impact of board diversity on the relationship between ownership structure and financial performance of listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria from 2013 to 2022 financial years. The ownership structure variables used in this study are foreign ownership and concentrated ownership while the financial performance used is represented by return on assets (ROA), and the moderating variable is board diversity. The sample of the study is all the fifty (50) listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria that make up the population of the study. The study uses secondary data and multiple regressions for the purpose of this study. The findings of the study reveal that foreign ownership has a positive and insignificant effect on financial performance. However, concentrated ownership has a positive and significant effect on performance. Board diversity has a positive effect on the relationship between foreign ownership, concentrated ownership and financial performance. The researchers therefore recommend that Regulatory bodies of manufacturing firms such as Standard Organization of Nigeria should ensure that board diversity in listed manufacturing firms in Nigeria is composed in such a way as to ensure diversity of experiences without compromising compatibility, integrity and independence. Should ensure that the diversity of experience without compromising compatibility, integrity and independence.

Can energy efficiency and natural resources foster economic growth? Evidence from BRICS countries

The availability of natural resources has a significant impact on economic growth. Nevertheless, the ineffective utilization of these resources can lead to economic instability and conflict, in addition to poor economic performance. Despite abundant natural resources, several resource-rich countries, such as Brazil, Africa, and India, have not realized the benefits of their natural capital and have not reaped the benefits of their abundant natural resource reserves. This study examines the role of natural resource rent in effecting economic development is evaluated for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa nations between the years 1990 and 2020 in the context of energy efficiency, financial risk, and technological innovation. To estimate the parameters, advanced econometric methods are utilized. According to the findings, natural resources have an effect that is counterproductive to the advancement of the economy. As a direct consequence, the resource curse argument can be validated for the sample nations. In addition, we found that improvements in technological innovation and energy efficiency both contributed positively to the expansion of the economy. On the other hand, the likelihood of financial loss is inversely proportional to economic development.

Monetary Policy Implications on Macroeconomic Performance in the Common Monetary Area: A Panel-SVAR Framework

The CMA (Common Monetary Area) is a quadrilateral monetary arrangement encompassing South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini. The four countries have undergone a gradual improvement in regional economic integration for the effective economic coordination of their policymaking. Despite the monetary coordination, the countries are still experiencing poor economic performance. This study traces how a shock or an unanticipated change in the anchor country’s central bank’s policy instrument, in this case, South Africa, affects the macroeconomic performance in the entire CMA region. Employing a Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive model (Panel-SVAR) and annual data from 1980–2021, the findings show that a positive shock in the repo rate from South Africa significantly affected important macroeconomic performance indicators. The results indicate that a shock in the anchor country’s repo rate is followed by a significant decline in RGDP_G, a decrease in inflation, a decrease in money supply, and an increase in lending rate in the entire CMA region. The study recommends that CMA monetary authorities and policymakers need to formulate policies toward cushioning the effects of unanticipated monetary policy shock from the anchor country as well as global shocks.

Natural resource endowments and growth dynamics in Africa: evidence from panel cointegrating regression

PurposeWith heterogeneous findings dominating the growth and natural resources relations, there is a need to explain the variances in Africa's growth process as induced by robust measures of factor endowments. This study used a comprehensive set of data from the updated database of the World Bank to capture the heterogeneous dimensions of natural resource endowments on growth with a particular focus on establishing complementary evidence on the resource curse hypothesis in energy and environmental economics literature in Africa. These comprehensive data on oil rent, coal rent and forest rent could provide new and insightful evidence on obscure relations on the subject matter.Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers the panel vector error correction model (PVECM) procedure to explain changes in economic growth outcomes as induced by oil rent, coal rent and forest rent. The consideration of the PVECM was premised on the panel unit root process that returns series that were cointegrated at the first-order differentials.FindingsThe paper found positive relations between oil rent, coal rent and economic development in Africa. Forest rent, on the other hand, is inversely related to economic growth in Africa. Trade and human capital are positively related to economic growth in Africa, while population growth is negatively associated with economic growth in Africa.Research limitations/implicationsShort-run policies should be tailored towards the stability of fiscal expenditure such that the objective of fiscal policy, which is to maintain the condition of full employment and economic stability and stabilise the rate of growth, can be optimised and sustained. By this, the resource curse will be averted and productive capacity will increase, leading to sustainable growth and development in Africa, where conditions for growth and development remain inadequately met.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper can be viewed from the strength of its arguments and methods adopted to address the questions raised in this paper. This study further illuminated age-long obscure relations in the literature of natural resource endowment and economic growth by taking a disaggregated approach to the component-by-component analysis of natural resources factors (the oil rent, coal rent and forest rent) and their corresponding influence on economic growth in Africa. This pattern remains underexplored mainly in previous literature on the subject. Many African countries are blessed with an abundance of these different natural resources in varying proportions. The misuse and mismanagement of these resources along various dimensions have been the core of the inclination towards the resource curse hypothesis in Africa. Knowing how growth conditions respond to changes in the depth of forest resources, oil resources and coal resources could be useful pointers in Africa's overall energy use and management. This study contributed to the literature on natural resource-induced growth dynamics by offering a generalisable conclusion as to why natural resource-abundance economies are prone to poor economic performance. This study further asks if mineral deposits are a source or reflection of ill growth and underdevelopment in African countries.

Combining beef cattle and sheep in an organic system. II. Benefits for economic and environmental performance.

Combining several animal species to optimise the performance of the whole farming system is one of the core tenets of agroecology. Here, we associated sheep with beef cattle (40-60% livestock units (LU)) in a mixed system (MIXsys) and compared its performances to those of a specialised beef cattle-only system (CATsys) and a specialised sheep-only system (SHsys). All three systems were designed to have identical annual stocking rates and similar farm areas, pastures and animals. The experiment was conducted for four campaigns (2017-2020) in an upland setting exclusively on permanent grassland under certified-organic farming standards. The young animals were fattened almost exclusively with forages: at pasture for lambs and indoors with haylage in winter for young cattle. Abnormally dry weather conditions led to hay purchases. We compared between-system and between-enterprise performances based on technical, economic (gross product, expenses, margins, income), environmental (greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), energy consumption) and feed-food competition balance indicators. The mixed-species association only benefited the sheep enterprise, with +17.1% meat production per LU (P<0.03), -17.8% concentrate used per LU (P<0.02), +10.0% gross margin (P<0.07) and +47.5% income per LU (P<0.03) in MIXsys vs SHsys, as well as environmental performance benefits via a reduction of 10.9% in GHG emissions (P<0.09) and 15.7% in energy consumption (P<0.03), and a 47.2% improvement in feed-food competition (P<0.01) in MIXsys vs SHsys. These results are due to both better animal performance and lower concentrate consumption in MIXsys, as presented in a companion paper. These benefits outweighed the additional costs of the mixed system, especially for fencing, in terms of net income per sheep LU. There were no between-system differences in productive and economic performance (kilos live-weight produced, kilos concentrate used and income per LU) for the beef cattle enterprise. Despite good animal performances, the beef cattle enterprises in both CATsys and MIXsys had poor economic performance due to large purchases of conserved forages and difficulty selling the animals, which were ill-adapted to the traditional downstream sector. This multiyear study at the farming-system level, which has thus far been underresearched for mixed livestock farming systems, highlighted and quantified the benefits for sheep when combined with beef cattle on economic, environmental, and feed-food competition performance.

Do Remittances Contribute to Presidential Instability in Latin America?

ABSTRACTAre Latin American presidents at greater risk for removal in remittance-dependent countries? Departing from the debate about whether remittances produce democratic or autocratic outcomes, this article asks whether remittances contribute to presidential removals, which are an important characteristic of Latin American democracies since the Third Wave. It uses questions about supporting a military coup under high corruption and crime scenarios to gauge remittance recipients’ support for early removal of a president. It finds that remittances create a constituency that tolerates military coups. Using data from Martínez (2021), the analysis also shows that remittances increase the risk of removal for presidents who face a greater number of scandals; but remittances do not pose this threat under poor economic performance.

Exergy and economic optimization of heat-integrated water regeneration networks

Implementing optimization strategies enhance resource conservation and pollution prevention of chemical processes. The above is a key factor to gear chemical process industry toward sustainability. Considering the above, this work presents, for the first-time, exergy loss as a decision-making objective into a process integration problem to reduce utility consumption (energy and water) of chemical processes. The methodology combines mathematical programming, superstructure formulation, and a 2-dimensional approach by integrating heat and water streams. A case study based on a magnetite nanoparticles production is presented to test the methodology. Different scenarios illustrated perspectives of including exergy loss as optimization objective; scenario 1 for cost optimization, scenario 2 for exergy optimization, and Scenario 3 for a combined 2-dimensional-optimization. Scenario 1 delivered the lowest total annualized cost (436,734.50 $USD/y) with an exergy loss of 2,519.76 MJ/h. Scenario 3 presented a more balanced performance with a total cost of 481,007.50 $USD/y and an exergy loss of 2,519.76 MJ/h. Scenario 2 showed the lowest exergy loss but with a poorer economic performance. The exergy variable provides a new way of optimizing chemical process at conceptual design level to reduce water and energy consumption.