Tool For Sustainability Impact Assessment Research Articles

Sustainability Impacts of Wood- and Concrete-Based Frame Buildings

The European Commission adopted a long-term strategic vision aiming for climate neutrality by 2050. Lithuania ratified the Paris agreement, making a binding commitment to cut its 1990 baseline GHG emissions by 40% in all sectors of its economy by 2030. In Lithuania, the main construction material is cement, even though Lithuania has a strong wood-based industry and abundant timber resources. Despite this, approximately twenty percent of the annual roundwood production from Lithuanian forests is exported, as well as other final wood products that could be used in the local construction sector. To highlight the potential that timber frame construction holds for carbon sequestration efforts, timber and concrete buildings were directly compared and quantified in terms of sustainability across their production value chains. Here the concept of “exemplary buildings” was avoided, instead a “traditional building” design was opted for, and two- and five-floor public buildings were selected. In this study, eleven indicators were selected to compare the sustainability impacts of wood-based and concrete-based construction materials, using a decision support tool ToSIA (a tool for sustainability impact assessment). Findings revealed the potential of glue-laminated timber (GLT) frames as a more sustainable alternative to precast reinforced concrete (PRC) in the construction of public low-rise buildings in Lithuania, and they showed great promise in reducing emissions and increasing the sequestration of CO2. An analysis of environmental and social indicators shows that the replacement of PRC frames with GLT frames in the construction of low-rise public buildings would lead to reduced environmental impacts, alongside a range of positive social impacts.

Rationalization of coppice management in Mediterranean Europe: the sustainability effects of changing product strategy and technology level

ABSTRACT Traditional coppice stands represent a sizable proportion of the Mediterranean forests and are generally geared to the production of firewood, which is eventually fed to traditional stoves for residential heat generation. In recent years, an alternative use has developed whereby trees are chipped whole and chips are fed to centralized heating plants. This latter system allows full mechanization of all supply chain steps and is considered more suited to modern living habits; at the same time, its introduction has raised concerns about possible new impacts on sustainability. This study presents a sustainability impact analysis (SIA) of the two systems, conducted with the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA). The results indicate that the new system is generally preferable. All indicators point at the superiority of the new system over the traditional one, except for employment potential. Compared with traditional firewood systems, the innovative system requires fewer workers, but it pays better and offers much safer workplaces. While the energy efficiency of a district heating system is not much higher than that of modern firewood stoves, the larger centralized plant can be fitted with better filters and emits much less particulate matter, which makes it especially suited to support development at a local level. Even if mechanized cutting caused a 20% reduction of coppice yields – which has yet to be proven – the new system would still prove more sustainable than the traditional one.

Integrating fast pyrolysis reactor with combined heat and power plant improves environmental and energy efficiency in bio-oil production

Abstract Biomass as a renewable energy source is an alternative to fossil fuels. Due to its lower energy density compared to fossil fuels, different ways of converting biomass into an energy-dense fuel are sought after. Fast pyrolysis of biomass into pyrolysis oil represents such method, allowing wider substitution of fossil fuels. Pyrolysis is an energy-intensive process but its efficiency can be improved by integration of pyrolysis reactor into a combined heat and power plant. In this study environmental analyses are conducted on the production of 50 000 tons of pyrolysis oil from wood to substitute for heavy fuel oil. The pyrolysis oil is produced either in a stand-alone reactor or as an integrated part of a combined heat and power plant. The combined heat and power plant is wood and peat fueled, producing of 820 GWh of energy. The cradle-to-grave emissions of CO2-eq, NOx, SO2, and PM are calculated by using two methods: 1) life cycle assessment and 2) the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment. Reductions in environmental loads of over 75% in (fossil) CO2-eq and over 90% in NOx, SO2, and PM can be achieved when heavy fuel oil is replaced by pyrolysis oil. The pyrolysis is 20% more efficient if integrated with CHP production. The potential reductions vary several percent between the applied methods because of different system boundaries. Nevertheless, integrating the pyrolysis reactor into a combined heat and power plant appears as the best option irrespective of the method used. Extending the system boundaries with the life cycle inventories results in significant increases of emissions in many processes; however, combustion in plants has a dominant role in overall emissions but is not subject to the boundary extensions, and thus, the totals of emissions between the methods are nearly the same.

Sustainability impact assessment tools for land use policy advice: A comparative analysis of five research approaches

Since 2007, a range of new modeling approaches and tools have been developed for sustainability impact assessment (SIA), but a lack of universal acceptance of SIA tools in applied policy making is observed. The current article gives an overview of experiences from several European and international projects, critically reviews the selected SIA tools and then discusses a number of reasons for the observed disconnect of the tools with the potential users. Largely based on the experiences of the presented SIA tools focusing land use policy advice, a decision tree is designed, which may facilitate an adequate, region and developmental phase specific selection of tool-box components for the development of SIA tools in future. Elements to ensure end-user participation are also integrated in the decision tree in order to increase the likelihood of the tool in applied land use policy advice. In addition, the Challenges in SIA tool development and use are further discussed.

Threefold sustainability impact assessment method comparison for renewable energy value chains

ABSTRACTThere is a variety of different methods for carrying out sustainability impact assessments of energy value chains. The different methods can use the same, or similarly named, indicators, but the methods make different assumptions about the system boundaries and differ in the purpose of the assessment, and this can lead to confusion when communicating the results of different studies. A method expansion of Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) was developed and tested to allow comparison of environmental indicators of energy use and generation, energy balance and greenhouse gas emission as calculated according to three different methods: (1) direct value chain environmental impacts (referred to as SIA in this paper), (2) direct plus indirect impacts following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, and (3) a method based on European Sustainability Criteria (ESC) for solid biomass. The Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA 2.0) was used for this method expansion. Indicator values following the three different approaches were calculated for a typical Nordic bioenergy harvesting chain producing forest wood chips. The indicator values for SIA, LCA and ESC are made comparable side by side, and give thus more insight on the difference and purpose of the three different methods when applied to the same harvesting chain.

Is enhanced biodiversity protection conflicting with ambitious bioenergy targets in eastern Finland?

The study describes how qualitative stakeholder feedback can be used in quantitative scenarios to simulate forest resource use under alternative management objectives. In earlier studies in the region of eastern Finland, stakeholders did not see a possible conflict between increased bioenergy use and nature conservation; this finding is contrary to the results of other studies. The aim of this study was to test with a quantitative modelling approach whether the stakeholder expectation holds and whether forest management in eastern Finland can simultaneously increase biomass utilization and biodiversity protection. Prior to this study, three alternative scenarios on forest resource use were created in a participatory stakeholder process, involving a broad range of stakeholders, with half of them being from research and education. In the current study, a large-scale forest resource planning model (MELA) and a sustainability impact assessment tool (ToSIA) were used to simulate the different alternative scenarios and present the results back to the stakeholders in order to evaluate them. The scenarios were evaluated by stakeholders using multi-criteria analysis. In a survey, the stakeholders indicated that biodiversity, employment, recreational value and greenhouse gas emissions were the most important indicators to them, whereas growing stock, amount of harvested roundwood, energy wood and protected forest area were considered less important. Of the created scenarios, the scenario combining bioenergy and biodiversity targets was the most preferred by the stakeholders as it performed well on those indicators that were identified by stakeholders as the most important. In this scenario, the area of protected forest and bioenergy production were increased simultaneously. With this study we offer a framework for evaluating different alternatives for future land use. The framework helps to identify key issues that are important to the stakeholders so that they can be taken into consideration in future land-use planning. In addition, the results confirm the stakeholder expectation that by protecting more forests while simultaneously increasing the mobilization of potentially available wood resources, both targets can be met without compromising too much other forest functions such as timber production and recreation.

Stakeholder engagement in scenario development process – Bioenergy production and biodiversity conservation in eastern Finland

In this study participatory approaches were used to develop alternative forest resource management scenarios with particular respect to the effects on increased use of forest bioenergy and its effect on biodiversity in Eastern Finland. As technical planning tools, we utilized a forest management planning system (MELA) and the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) to visualize the impacts of the scenarios. We organized a stakeholder workshop where group discussions were used as a participatory method to get the stakeholder preferences and insights concerning forest resource use in the year 2030. Feedback from the workshop was then complemented with a questionnaire. Based on the results of the workshop and a questionnaire we developed three alternative forest resource scenarios: (1) bioenergy 2030 – in which energy production is more centralized and efficient; (2) biodiversity 2030 – in which harvesting methods are more nature friendly and protected forests make up 10% of the total forest area; and (3) mixed bioenergy + biodiversity 2030 scenario – in which wood production, recreation and nature protection are assigned to the most suitable areas. The study showed that stakeholder engagement combined with the MELA and ToSIA tools can be a useful approach in scenario development.

Evaluating the characteristics of a non-standardised Model Requirements Analysis (MRA) for the development of policy impact assessment tools

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a non-standardised Model Requirements Analysis (MRA) used for the purpose of developing the Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT). By ‘non-standardised’ we mean not strictly following a published MRA method. The underlying question we are interested in addressing is how non-standardised methods, often employed in research driven projects, compare to defined methods with more standardised structure, with regards their ability to capture model requirements effectively, and with regards their overall usability. Through describing and critically assessing the specific features of the non-standardised MRA employed, the ambition of this paper is to provide insights useful for impact assessment tool (IAT) development. Specifically, the paper will (i) characterise kinds of user requirements relevant to the functionality and design of IATs; (ii) highlight the strengths and weaknesses of non-standardised MRA for user requirements capture, analysis and reflection in the context of IAT; (iii) critically reflect on the process and outcomes of having used a non-standardised MRA in comparison with other more standardised approaches. To accomplish these aims, we first review methods available for IAT development before describing the SIAT development process, including the MRA employed. Major strengths and weaknesses of the MRA method are then discussed in terms of user identification and characterisation, organisational characterisation and embedding, and ability to capture design options for ensuring usability and usefulness. A detailed assessment on the structural differences of MRA with two advanced approaches (Integrated DSS design and goal directed design) and their role in performance of the MRA tool is used to critique the approach employed. The results show that MRA is able to bring thematic integration, establish system performance and technical thresholds as well as detailing quality and transparency guidelines. Nevertheless the discussion points out to a number of deficiencies in application - (i) a need to more effectively characterise potential users, and; (ii) a need to better foster communication among the distinguished roles in the development process. If addressed these deficiencies, SIAT non-standardised MRA could have brought out better outcomes in terms of tool usability and usefulness, and improved embedding of the tool into conditions of targeted end-users.

A Concept for Testing Decision Support Tools in Participatory Processes Applied to the ToSIA Tool

ToSIA (Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment) offers a transparent and consistent methodological framework to assess impacts of changes (technological, policy, management, etc.) in the forest-based sector. This tool is able to facilitate the decision making process within and between diverse groups of stakeholders (e.g., forest managers and policymakers) as it provides a neutral, transparent and data-driven platform for stakeholder interaction and communication. To test these capabilities of ToSIA, a practical approach to test if a decision support system is suitable for participatory processes was developed based on a set of evaluation criteria for participatory processes. ToSIA’s performance was assessed and discussed in different categories against a selection of criteria for successful participatory processes: six criteria were fulfilled by ToSIA, in nine, ToSIA is potentially helpful, in two, criteria ToSIA has no influence, and for three criteria, no experiences exist until now. As a result, ToSIA’s conceptual suitability as a participatory decision support system was confirmed for two interlinked roles: as a decision support system to assess alternative scenarios, and as a communication platform for stakeholder interaction.

Sustainability impact assessment using integrated meta-modelling: Simulating the reduction of direct support under the EU common agricultural policy (CAP)

Assessing the impact of macro-level policy driven land use changes on regional sustainability is an important task that can facilitate complex decision making processes of introducing reforms. The research work demonstrates the ability of Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT), a meta-model, in conducting ex ante spatially explicit cross sectoral impact assessments of changes in common agricultural policy (CAP). The meta-model is able to appraise impacts of CAP amendments on land use and their repercussions on multiple indicators of sustainability. The presented study comprehensively analyses the possible impacts of discontinuing direct financial support to farmers under CAP. The simulations of the meta-model are able to reveal the land use changes both at EU and regional levels as well as to bring forth the subsequent changes in a number of indicators representing the regional sustainability (for five case study regions). In a nutshell, the simulations indicate that a reduction in direct support brings in general, a decrease in farmed area, an increase in forested land, less fluctuation in natural vegetation coverage, increase in abandoned arable land area and negligible changes in built-up area despite regionally diverging land use trends. The simulated changes in sustainability indicators for the study regions in consequence to these land use changes show that the discontinuation of subsidies evokes responses that are in general climate friendly (reduction in methane and N2O emissions, diminishing energy use and reduction in global warming potential), economically beneficial (increase in gross value of agriculture) and socially desired (decrease in unemployment rate) as well as environmentally harmful (increase in pesticide use). Even though the appraisals of diversity indicators such as forest deadwood and farmland birds are not conclusive for all regions, the changes are positive for the former indicator and slightly negative for the latter in general. The trade-offs among these regional sustainability indicators using their directional associations are also presented for a comprehensive assessment of the impacts.

Sustainability Impact Assessment on the Production and Use of Different Wood and Fossil Fuels Employed for Energy Production in North Karelia, Finland

The utilization rate of woody biomass in eastern Finland is high and expected to increase further in the near future as set out in several regional, national and European policies and strategies. The aim of this study was to assess the sustainability impacts of changes in fuel consumption patterns. We investigated fossil and woody biomass-based energy production chains in the region of North Karelia, focusing on some economic, environmental and social indicators. Indicators were selected based on stakeholder preferences and evaluated using the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA). The analysis was based on representative values from National Forest Inventory data, scientific publications, national and regional statistics, databases, published policy targets and expert opinion. From the results it became evident that shifting from fossil to wood-based energy production implies some trade-offs. Replacing oil with woody biomass in energy production would increase the local value added remaining in the region, create employment opportunities and would reduce total GHG emissions. However, firewood, wood chips from small-diameter trees from early thinning and wood pellets have high production costs. Moreover, large greenhouse gas emission resulted from wood pellet production. The case study generated valuable reference data for future sustainability assessments and demonstrated the usefulness of ToSIA as a tool presenting existing knowledge on sustainability impacts of alternative energy supply chains to inform decision making.

Towards assessing the sustainability of European logging operations

The forest-based sector has been at the forefront in operationally implementing the sustainability concept, its associated principles and indicators for sustainable forest management. Several methods have been developed to study environmental impacts of forestry activities, but none of the existing tools address all the dimensions of sustainability along the whole forest wood chain (FWC) in a balanced way. Consequently, the decision was made to develop a tool for sustainability impact assessment (ToSIA), the modelling framework for sustainability impact assessment of FWCs. The objective of the EU Project Eforwood was to develop ToSIA, a decision support tool. Within ToSIA, a FWC is modelled as a number of interconnected processes. For each process, a range of economic, environmental and social indicators and their respective values are calculated, thus representing the three pillars of sustainability. By this method, the multifunctionality of forests can be assessed and supply chains can be compared with respect to sustainability. Sensitivity analysis and scenario techniques can be applied to learn about the effect of expected changes to the structure of the chain, the material flows and the indicator values. In order to provide the tool with information about forest and logging operations, data were collected at two fundamental levels: (1) a regional level with case studies in Scandinavia, Iberia and Baden-Wurttemberg and (2) a European level with a case study that reflects conditions in the 27 countries of the European Union. This paper describes and details the harvesting and logging processes for the European countries. The results are displayed for each of the three regional case studies as well as aggregated to five principal areas in Europe: Eastern, Northern, Western, Central and Southwest Europe.

A transport tool to evaluate sustainability impacts of transport processes within the Forest Wood Chain

The development of ToSIA (tool for sustainability impact assessment of the Forest Wood Chain) involved to measure economic, social and environmental indicators of all transformation processes belonging to the Forest Wood Chain (FWC). In this context, a specific tool has been developed to measure indicators related to almost all transport processes of each European FWC. The aim of this article is to describe the approach and the method used to set up this tool and also to illustrate some of its applications through an example. The example shows how the tool can deal with major transport issues by determining, in a German case, the distances (respectively, 330 and 280 km) setting the economic advantage to use rail and inland waterways instead of road. Moreover, it evaluates the implications of such changes in term of Green House Gas reduction (respectively, 50 and 56%).

Conducting sustainability impact assessments of forestry-wood chains: examples of ToSIA applications

Within the EFORWOOD project, new methodological approaches to assess the sustainability impacts of forestry-wood chains (FWC) were developed by using indicators of environmental, social and economic relevance. This paper introduces and discusses the developed approach and the two main products developed in the EFORWOOD project: the Database Client and the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA), which hold, calculate and integrate the extensive information and data collected. Sustainability impact assessment (SIA) of FWCs is based on measuring and analysing environmental, economic and social indicators for all of the production processes along the value chain. The adoption of the method varies between applications and depends on the specification of the FWC in the assessment and what questions are studied. ToSIA is very flexible and can apply forest-, product-, industry- and consumer-defined perspectives. Each perspective influences the focus of the analysis and affects system boundaries. ToSIA can assess forest value chains in different geographical regions covering local, regional, national and up to the continental scale. Potential issues and scenarios can be analysed with the tool including, for example, the impacts of different forest policies on the sustainability of an FWC. This paper presents how ToSIA can be applied to solve such diverse problems and underlines this with examples from different case studies. Differences in chain set-up, system boundaries and data requirements are highlighted and experiences with the implementation of the sustainability impact assessment methods are discussed. The EFORWOOD case studies offer valuable reference data for future sustainability assessments.

Sustainability impact assessment of increasing resource use intensity in forest bioenergy production chains

Changing forest management practices towards more intensive biomass utilization for energy purposes will affect the sustainability of resource management. The Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment was applied to evaluate the environmental, social, and economic sustainability impacts of the stepwise increased extraction of forest biomass of three typical Scandinavian Scots pine bioenergy production chains (BPCs). The assessed sources of the woody biomass were pellets as a by-product of the sawmilling industry, wood chips deriving from early whole-tree harvesting, and residues from final cuttings. Three commercially practiced BPCs were compared. By the additional extraction of biomass for heat production, the employment increased by 0.6 person-years 1000 m ―3 solid wood chips, while there was a decrease in the costs and greenhouse gases emitted per unit of heat consumed. Furthermore this practice did not only add positive socio-economic but also positive environmental impacts on sustainability, particularly on the greenhouse gas balance and the energy efficiency ratio (input to output ratio along the BPC), which was determined to be 1-24. Potential drawbacks, on the other hand, include decreasing nutrient returns to the soil and the associated potential reduction in future stand productivity. Fertilization might be needed to maintain sustainable forest growth on poor sites.

Assigning results of the Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) to products of a forest-wood-chain

A Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA) has been developed for assessing sustainability impacts of forest-wood-chains (FWCs). Sustainability is determined by analysing environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators for all the production processes along the FWC. Results of the tool can be analysed at an aggregated level for complete FWCs, but for some applications it is useful to assign the indicator results to products of the chain. This paper presents a procedure in ToSIA to assign sustainability impacts to multiple output products of FWC. The procedure was tested and demonstrated with an example FWC from Scandinavia that included furniture and bio-energy production. Two different allocation criteria, carbon-based and economic value-based, were applied with different options for assigning the impacts on the sub-products of the chain. Three indicators representing the three pillars of the sustainability were chosen to demonstrate the procedure: production costs (economic), employment (social) and transport intensity (environmental). The results indicated that the allocation criteria greatly affect the indicator results assigned to the different products of FWCs. The selection of the allocation criterion depends on the question approached and on the availability of the needed process related data. The data availability is assured for the carbon-based allocation within ToSIA, as following the carbon flows within the chain is mandatory for any ToSIA application. Economic values of products, on the other hand, are more closely linked to the aims of the production processes of the value chains and are thereby meaningful allocation criteria in many cases. The allocation procedure of ToSIA was proved to be flexible allowing different criteria and still consistent in allocation of the various sustainability impacts of the FWCs.

An IT perspective on integrated environmental modelling: The SIAT case

Policy makers have a growing interest in integrated assessments of policies. The Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) community is reacting to this interest by extending the application of model development from pure scientific analysis towards application in decision making or policy context by giving tools a higher capability for analysis targeted at non-experts, but intelligent users. Many parties are involved in the construction of such tools including modellers, domain experts and tool users, resulting in as many views on the proposed tool. During tool development research continues which leads to advanced understanding of the system and may alter early specifications. Accumulation of changes to the initial design obscures the design, usually vastly increasing the number of defects in the software. The software engineering community uses concepts, methods and practices to deal with ambiguous specifications, changing requirements and incompletely conceived visions, and to design and develop maintainable/extensible quality software. The aim of this paper is to introduce modellers to software engineering concepts and methods which have the potential to improve model and tool development using experiences from the development of the Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool. These range from choosing a software development methodology for planning activities and coordinating people, technical design principles impacting maintainability, quality and reusability of the software to prototyping and user involvement. It is argued that adaptive development methods seem to best fit research projects, that typically have unclear upfront and changing requirements. The break-down of a system into elements that overlap as little as possible in features and behaviour helps to divide the work across teams and to achieve a modular and flexible system. However, this must be accompanied by proper automated testing methods and automated continuous integration of the elements. Prototypes, screen sketches and mock-ups are useful to align the different views, build a shared vision of required functionality and to match expectations.

ToSIA—A tool for sustainability impact assessment of forest-wood-chains

Within the forest sector, the sustainability concept has evolved from a narrow focus on sustainable wood production to a much broader evaluation of environmental, social, and economic sustainability for whole value chains. A new software tool – ToSIA – has been developed for assessing sustainability impacts of Forest-Wood-Chains (FWCs). In the approach, FWCs are defined as chains of production processes (e.g. harvesting–transport–industrial processing), which are linked with products (e.g. a timber frame house). Sustainability is determined by analysing environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators for all the production processes along the FWC. The tool calculates sustainability values as products of the relative indicator values (i.e. indicator value expressed per unit of material flow) multiplied with the material flow entering the process. Calculated sustainability values are then aggregated for the segments of the FWC or for the complete chain. The sustainability impact assessment requires carefully specified system boundaries. ToSIA uses a data-oriented approach that is very flexible in the focus of the analysis and the selection of indicators of sustainability. An example of alternative Norway spruce management systems in Southern Germany and their effects on six sustainability indicators is presented. The less intensive management system with natural regeneration and motor–manual harvesting shows higher carbon storage and slightly less energy use. It creates more employment and higher labour costs, but the average rate of accidents is also higher. ToSIA offers a transparent and consistent methodological framework to assess sustainability impacts in the forest-based sector as affected, e.g. by changes in policies, market conditions, or technology. The paper discusses strengths and limitations of the approach and provides an outlook on further development perspectives of the methodology.