Sustainability

About: Sustainability is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 129330 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2575472 citations. The topic is also known as: resilience & ecological sustainability.

Sustainable Hydrogen Production

Abstract: Identifying and building a sustainable energy system are perhaps two of the most critical issues that today's society must address. Replacing our current energy carrier mix with a sustainable fuel is one of the key pieces in that system. Hydrogen as an energy carrier, primarily derived from water, can address issues of sustainability, environmental emissions, and energy security. Issues relating to hydrogen production pathways are addressed here. Future energy systems require money and energy to build. Given that the United States has a finite supply of both, hard decisions must be made about the path forward, and this path must be followed with a sustained and focused effort.

Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate

Abstract: The need for regulation to protect the environment gets widespread but grudging acceptance: widespread because everyone wants a livable planet, grudging because of the lingering belief that environmental regulations erode competitiveness. The prevailing view is that there is an inherent and fixed trade-off: ecology versus the economy. On one side of the trade-off are the social benefits that arise from strict environmental standards. On the other are industry's private costs for prevention and cleanup -- costs that lead to higher prices and reduced competitiveness. With the argument framed this way, progress on environmental quality has become a kind of arm-wrestling match. One side pushes for tougher standards; the other tries to roll them back. The balance of power shifts one way or the other depending on the prevailing political winds. This static view of environmental regulation, in which everything except regulation is held constant, is incorrect. If technology, products, processes, and customer needs were all fixed, the conclusion that regulation must raise costs would be inevitable. But companies operate in the real world of dynamic competition, not in the static world of much economic theory. They are constantly finding innovative solutions to pressures of all sorts -- from competitors, customers, and regulators. Properly designed environmental standards can trigger innovations that lower the total cost of a product or improve its value. Such innovations allow companies to use a range of inputs more productively -- from raw materials to energy to labor -- thus offsetting the costs of improving environmental impact and ending the stalemate. Ultimately, this enhanced resource productivity makes companies more competitive, not less. Consider how the Dutch flower industry has responded to its environmental problems. Intense cultivation of flowers in small areas was contaminating the soil and groundwater with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Facing increasingly strict regulation on the release of chemicals, the Dutch understood that the only effective way to address the problem would be to develop a closed-loop system. In advanced Dutch greenhouses, flowers now grow in water and rock wool, not in soil. This lowers the risk of infestation, reducing the need for fertilizers and pesticides, which are delivered in water that circulates and is reused. The tightly monitored closed-loop system also reduces variation in growing conditions, thus improving product quality. Handling costs have gone down because the flowers are cultivated on specially designed platforms. In addressing the environmental problem, then, the Dutch have innovated in ways that have raised the productivity with which they use many of the resources involved in growing flowers. The net result is not only dramatically lower environmental impact but also lower costs, better product quality, and enhanced global competitiveness. (See the insert "Innovating to Be Competitive: The Dutch Flower Industry.") This example illustrates why the debate about the relationship between competitiveness and the environment has been framed incorrectly. Policy makers, business leaders, and environmentalists have focused on the static cost impacts of environmental regulation and have ignored the more important offsetting productivity benefits from innovation. As a result, they have acted too often in ways that unnecessarily drive up costs and slow down progress on environmental issues. This static mind-set has thus created a self-fulfilling prophecy leading to ever more costly environmental regulation. Regulators tend to set regulations in ways that deter innovation. Companies, in turn, oppose and delay regulations instead of innovating to address them. The whole process has spawned an industry of litigators and consultants that drains resources away from real solutions. POLLUTION = INEFFICIENCY Are cases like the Dutch flower industry the exception rather than the rule? …

Our Ecological Footprint: reducing human impact on the earth - eScholarship

Abstract: Review: Our Ecological Footprint: reducing human impact on the Earth. By Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees Reviewed by Gene Bazan Center for Sustainability, Pennsylvania State University Wackernagel, Mathis and William Rees. Our Ecological Footprint: reducing human impact on the Earth. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1996. 160 pp. US $14.94 paper ISBN: 0-86571-312-X. Partially recycled, acid-free paper using soy-based ink. If the earth's inhabitants were to live at the standard of the U.S., we would require three planet Earths to support us. Many of us have heard or read something like this before. Our Ecological Footprint provides a graphically compelling and quantitatively rigorous way for us to engage in the worldwide sustainability debate: Ecological Footprint analysis. Through this analysis we can determine the consequences of our behavior, and proposed solutions, at any level: individual, household, community, nation, or world. Ecological Footprint analysis measures the aggregate land area required for a given population to exist in a sustainable manner. Wackernagel and Rees note that at 11 acres per person, the U.S. has the highest per capita footprint and suggest that this number should be closer to 6 acres per person. Further, the U.S. faces an 80% ecological deficit, which means we are borrowing from our grandchildren's legacy, and expropriating land from elsewhere in the world. By contrast, each European requires around 5 acres; however, Europeans face higher ecological deficits because they have smaller land areas. Unlike other approaches, which focus on the depletion of non-renewables such as fossil fuel and minerals, Ecological Footprint analysis asserts that the road to sustainability must be paved with sustainable practices. Thus, our use of fossil fuel must have as a compensatory sink the acres of woodlot required to sequester the carbon from our combustion of fossil fuel (in our cars, home heating, etc.) or, alternatively, the acres of fields required to grow biofuel. For example, in comparing our daily commute by car, bus or bicycle, and considering all land requirements (e.g., manufacturing land to produce