Beschreibung: The field of nutrition will face numerous challenges in coming decades; these arise from changing lifestyles and global consumption patterns accompanied by a high use of resources. Against this background, this paper presents a newly designed tool to decrease the effect on nutrition, the so-called Nutritional Footprint. The tool is based on implementing the concept of a sustainable diet in decision-making processes, and supporting a resource-light society. The concept integrates four indicators in each of the two nutrition-related fields of health and environment, and condenses them into an easily communicable result, which limits its results to one effect level. Applied to eight lunch meals, the methodology and its calculations procedures are presented in detail. The results underline the general scientific view of food products; animal-protein based meals are more relevant considering their health and environmental effects. The concept seems useful for consumers to evaluate their own choices, and companies to expand their internal data, their benchmarking processes, or their external communication performance. Methodological shortcomings and the interpretation of results are discussed, and the conclusion shows the tools' potential for shaping transition processes, and for the reduction of natural resource use by supporting food suppliers' and consumers' decisions and choice.

Beschreibung: In a globalized economy, the use of natural resources is determined by the demand of modern production and consumption systems, and by infrastructure development. Sustainable natural resource use will require good governance and management based on sound scientific information, data and indicators. There is a rich literature on natural resource management, yet the national and global scale and macro-economic policy making has been underrepresented. We provide an overview of the scholarly literature on multi-scale governance of natural resources, focusing on the information required by relevant actors from local to global scale. Global natural resource use is largely determined by national, regional, and local policies. We observe that in recent decades, the development of public policies of natural resource use has been fostered by an "inspiration cycle" between the research, policy and statistics community, fostering social learning. Effective natural resource policies require adequate monitoring tools, in particular indicators for the use of materials, energy, land, and water as well as waste and GHG emissions of national economies. We summarize the state-of-the-art of the application of accounting methods and data sources for national material flow accounts and indicators, including territorial and product-life-cycle based approaches. We show how accounts on natural resource use can inform the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and argue that information on natural resource use, and in particular footprint indicators, will be indispensable for a consistent implementation of the SDGs. We recognize that improving the knowledge base for global natural resource use will require further institutional development including at national and international levels, for which we outline options.

Beschreibung: The innovative software system "myEcoCost" enables to gather and communicate resource and environmental data for products and services in global value chains. The system has been developed in the consortium of the European research project myEcoCost and forms a basis of a new, highly automated environmental accounting system für companies and consumers. The prototype of the system, linked to financial accounting of companies, was developed and tested in close collaboration with large and small companies. This brochure gives a brief introduction to the vision linked to myEcoCost: a network formed by collaborative environmental accounting nodes collecting environmental data at each step in a product's value chains. It shows why better life cycle data are needed and how myEcoCost addresses and solves this problem. Furthermore, it presents options for a future upscaling of highly automated environmenal accounting for prodcuts and services.

Beschreibung: This article analyses drivers and barriers to returning and recycling mobile phones and their consideration in existing communication and collection campaigns. This is an important issue based on the fact that the mobile phone market is growing rapidly. In 2015 there are nearly 7 billion global mobile cellular subscriptions. This means that, at least theoretically, everyone in the world has access to mobile communication services (ITU 2015). However, the production of mobile phones is linked to an increasing use of natural resources: the "ecological rucksack" of a mobile phone is equal to about 75 kg of resources (Nordmann et al. 2015); while the global recycling rate of mobile phones is under 10 per cent (Nokia 2008, Tanskanen 2012). In order to adress this issue, the main factors that influence return and recycling behaviour (focussing on mobile phones) will be discussed in chapter 2 of this article. The theoretical analysis is based on the norm activation model by Ellen Matthies (2005). This analysis will be complemented by empirical data and findings generated in the research project "Return and use of old mobile phones", funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy/Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, 2012-2014). To conclude, we will identify and operationalise essential components of mobile phone communication and collection campaigns, based on the theoretical approach of Matthies, literature and empirical studies, in order to develop a set of criteria for analysing and rating such communication and collection campaigns. The results show that economic incentives as well as education and communication play a very important role in initiating more sustainable behavioural patterns in the ICT sector. The role of emotional factors is often underestimated in the development of communication activities. In summary, successful mobile phone communication and collection campaigns require a combination of several institutional, economic, social and emotional factors.

Beschreibung: The paper reflects the hypothesis that those technological and institutional innovations survive which extend the safe operating range (SOR) of the Humans-Technologies-Institutions (HTI) system (e.g. companies, cities, regions and countries). The multidimensional SOR of a country comprises in particular safe livelihood, quality of life, security, monetary stability, supply security and quality of the environment. A "mechanism of progress" is described involving the search for higher safety and independence of constraints. With innovation and learning in a key role, the mechanism leads to a relative decoupling of resource use and economic value added and a growing share of knowledge generation in the economy. Competition of HTI systems for scarce resources may lead to independence strategies such as enhanced resource efficiency. It may also lead to cooperation of competing HTI systems facilitated by new institutions thus forming an HTI system at higher level of complexity. While the consortium could coordinate their resource consumption within the boundaries of safe operating space, the partner HTI systems would further expand their SOR. Data is provided that net resource importing countries have developed higher material productivity thus increasing their independence from resource supply, and countries with such capability have gained higher innovation capacity.

Beschreibung: The bioeconomy is gaining growing attention as a perceived win-win strategy for environment and economy in the EU. However, the EU already has a disproportionately high global cropland footprint compared to the world average, and uses more cropland than domestically available to supply its demand for agricultural products. There is a risk that uncontrolled growth of the bioeconomy will increase land use pressures abroad. For that reason, a monitoring system is needed to account for the global land use of European consumption. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at the tools needed to monitor global cropland footprints, as well as the targets needed to benchmark development. This paper reviews recent developments in land footprint accounting approaches and applies the method of global land use accounting to calculate the global cropland footprint of the EU-27 for the years between 2000 and 2011. It finds a slight decrease in per capita cropland footprints over the past decade (of around 1% annually, reaching 0.29 ha/cap in 2011) and advocates promoting a further decrease in per capita cropland requirements (of around 2% annually) to reach global land use targets for keeping consumption within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries by 2030. It argues that strategic land reduction targets may still go hand in hand with the growth of a smart, innovative and sustainable bioeconomy by reinforcing the need for policies that support greater efficiency across the life-cycle and reduce wasteful and excessive consumption practices. Recommendations for further improving land footprint accounting are given.

Beschreibung: Objective: The aim of the present article is to conduct an integrated assessment in order to explore whether CCS could be a viable technological option for significantly reducing future CO2 emissions in China. Methods: In this paper, an integrated approach covering five assessment dimensions is chosen. Each dimension is investigated using specific methods (graphical abstract). Results: The most crucial precondition that must be met is a reliable storage capacity assessment based on site-specific geological data. Our projection of different trends of coal-based power plant capacities up to 2050 ranges between 34 and 221 Gt of CO2 that may be captured from coal-fired power plants to be built by 2050. If very optimistic assumptions about the country’s CO2 storage potential are applied, 192 Gt of CO2 could theoretically be stored as a result of matching these sources with suitable sinks. If a cautious approach is taken, this figure falls to 29 Gt of CO2. In practice, this potential will decrease further with the impact of technical, legal, economic and social acceptance factors. Further constraints may be the delayed commercial availability of CCS in China; a significant barrier to achieving the economic viability of CCS due to a currently non-existing nation-wide CO2 pricing scheme that generates a sufficiently strong price signal; an expected life-cycle reduction rate of the power plant's greenhouse gas emissions of 59-60%; and an increase in most other negative environmental and social impacts. Conclusion and practice implications: Most experts expect a striking dominance of coal-fired power generation in the country's electricity sector, even if the recent trend towards a flattened deployment of coal capacity and reduced annual growth rates of coal-fired generation proves to be true in the future. In order to reduce fossil fuel-related CO2 emissions to a level that would be consistent with the long-term climate protection target of the international community to which China is increasingly committing itself, this option may require the introduction of CCS. However, a precondition for opting for CCS would be finding robust solutions to the constraints highlighted in this article. Furthermore, a comparison with other low-carbon technology options may be useful in drawing completely valid conclusions on the economic, ecological and social viability of CCS in a low-carbon policy environment. The assessment dimensions should be integrated into macro-economic optimisation models by combining qualitative with quantitative modelling, and the flexible operation of CCS power plants should be analysed in view of a possible role of CCS for balancing fluctuating renewable energies.

Beschreibung: The industry sector accounted for just over 30% of global GHG emissions in 2010 and scenarios envisage a continuing rise in demand for energy-intensive materials. This article sums up the most recent international analysis (IPCC, IEA, UNIDO, Global Energy Assessment) to give a broad view of the current prospects for reducing GHG emissions in industry. It does so from a global perspective, complementing where necessary where regional and sector-specific case studies. The article addresses the portfolio of options available, their technical and economic potentials, the experience in the use of policy instruments in industry, the synergies and tradeoffs that mitigation in the industry sector can have with other policy objectives, and the specific concerns of developing countries. Long-term decarbonisation pathways for the sector are also presented.

Beschreibung: This study conducted by Wuppertal Institute and Germanwatch explores how the social pillar of sustainability at the local level could be met in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects. For this purpose, the authors evaluate the livelihood dimension of CSP technology based on a case study conducted on the 160 MW pilot CSP plant Nooro I in Ouarzazate, Morocco.

Beschreibung: The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to one of the most important industrial regions in Europe, and is the first German state to have adopted its own Climate Protection Law (CPL). This paper describes the long-term (up to 2050) mitigation scenarios for NRW’s main energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors which served to support the implementation of the CPL. It also describes the process of scenario development, as these scenarios were developed through stakeholder participation. The scenarios considered three different pathways (best-available technologies, break-through technologies, and CO2 capture and storage). All pathways had optimistic assumptions on the rate of industrial growth and availability of low-carbon electricity. We find that a policy of "re-industrialisation" for NRW based on the current industrial structures (assumed here to represent an average growth of NRWs industrial gross value added (GVA) of 1.6% per year until 2030 and 0.6% per year from 2030 to 2050), would pose a significant challenge for the achievement of overall energy demand and German greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, in particular as remaining efficiency potentials in NRW are limited. In the best-available technology (BAT) scenario CO2 emission reductions of only 16% are achieved, whereas the low carbon (LC) and the carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario achieve 50% and 79% reduction respectively. Our results indicate the importance of successful development and implementation of a decarbonised electricity supply and breakthrough technologies in industry - such as electrification, hydrogen-based processes for steel, alternative cements or CCS - if significant growth is to be achieved in combination with climate mitigation. They, however, also show that technological solutions alone, together with unmitigated growth in consumption of material goods, could be insufficient to meet GHG reduction targets in industry.