The benefit of an artificial carbohydrates supply on Earth

<p>Our conventional, biogenic agriculture (CBA) has failed to provide a reliable concept to feed a growing population in a sustainable way. In particular CBA suffers from severe environmental externalities - such as the massive use of land area, water for irrigation, fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides, and fossil fuel.</p> <p>Here we suggest the artificial synthesis of carbohydrates from (atmospheric) carbon dioxide, water, and renewable energy, which would allow not only a highly reliable production without those externalities, but would also open the possibility to increase the agricultural capacity of our planet by several orders of magnitude. Our study shows that saccharose could be produced from CO2, water and electrical energy with an efficiency exceeding 30% equivalent to about 15 kWh per kg of sugar. Factoring in the efficiency of photovoltaic electricity generation we derive a „sun to sugar“ efficinecy exceeding 6%, which is about 10-times the efficiency of CBA sugar beets or sugar cane.</p> <p>All required technology is either commercially available or at least developed on a lab-scale. No directed research has, however, yet been conducted towards an industry-scale carbohydrate synthesis because the CBA carbohydrate production was thought to be economically more competitive. However, considering the environmental and socioeconomic externalities of the conventional sugar production, this economical narrative has to be questioned. We estimate the production costs of artificial sugar at about 1 €/kg. Today’s spot market price for conventional sugar is about 0.3 €/kg, however, we estimate its total costs (including external costs) at >0.9 €/kg in humid regions and >2 €/kg in semi-arid regions. Accordingly, artificial sugar appears already today to be the less expensive way of production. The artificial sugar production allows in principle also for a subsequent synthesis of other carbohydrates such as starch as well as of fats. These synthetic products could be used as a feedstock to microorganisms, fungi, insects, or livestock in order to enhance also the sustainability of the biogenic production of, e.g., proteins.</p>

The Health Impact and External Cost of Electricity Production

The use of fossil fuels, which still dominate global primary energy consumption, results not only in emissions of greenhouse gas but also in emissions of pollutants such as SO2, NOx, and PM. Damage caused by air pollution can be expressed in monetary terms in the form of external costs to society. The goal of this paper is to answer the following questions: How much will the energy sector’s emissions change as a result of decarbonization? What is the estimated level of external costs related to human health in future energy scenarios? How large are the estimated external costs compared to the planned investments in this sector? The study conducted for the period 2018–2050 used the impact pathway approach and covered the centralized power and heat generation sector in Poland. The reported values of the concentration–response functions that relate human exposure to air pollution with health impact were reviewed. The results show that external costs decrease from an estimated annual level in the range of EUR 782–1911 million in 2018 to EUR 36–876 million in 2050. The cumulative value of avoided external costs between 2018 and 2050 is significantly lower than the planned capital expenditures in the energy sector in Poland.

Environmentally Responsible Happy Nation Index: A Proposed National Success Indicator

The average happy life years HLY (of a country) is the product of the average happiness (or life satisfaction) index and the life expectancy index. Adjusting HLY to get rid of the misleading parts with negative happiness to obtain the adjusted or net HLY; deducting again the per-capita environmental costs imposed on others, we obtain the ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ as an internationally acceptable national success indicator that accounts positively for long and happy lives but negatively at the external costs of environmental disruption imposed on others and in the future. Hopefully, this ‘environmentally responsible happy nation index’ will lead to some re-orientation of both the market and national governments towards something more fundamentally valuable.

Effects of Incorporating Rail Transport into a Zero-Emission Urban Deliveries System: Application of Light Freight Railway (LFR) Electric Trains

This paper addresses the issue of incorporating rail transport into an urban delivery system. Its main purpose was to identify the possibilities of utilising rail transport in a Zero-emission Urban Delivery System (ZUDS) by applying Light Freight Railway (LFR) electric trains. The study applied the following research methods: literature review, observation, case study, and mathematical computations. In order to estimate the volume of transport external costs reduction resulting from shifting urban deliveries from road to rail transport in the city of Szczecin, the EU methodology was applied to specify the amounts of external costs generated by individual modes and means of transport. The research study showed that application of LFR electric trains makes it possible to significantly reduce external costs generated by transport. Moreover, this solution may have an impact on developing Clean Transport Zones (CTZs) and may also contribute to expansion of the ZUDS. The research study results also provide grounds to conclude that application of the LFR system makes it possible to reduce negative effects generated by Urban Freight Transport (UFT) and to achieve a coherent zero-emission system for handling cargo and passenger flows in cities, which consequently contributes to achieving electromobility goals in transport.

Proposal for Conceptualising Zero Waste City: Katraj

The practices of “zero waste city concept” which has been implemented successfully in very few town /cities in the world, in that merely developed countries comes where there is availabilty of funds. It is in the developing countries that research have been made towards sustainability due to the less or unavailability of funds. “Zero waste city ,” where the entire municipal solid waste is treated with organic scientific method , is a perfectly sustainable & durable solution to the rapidly increasing ecological , eco friendly and socio-domestic problem facing today’s era. “Zero landfills approch” is another feature/side of zero waste city practices . Landfills requires high costs both private and external costs that get hidden in taxes on already tax-paying citizens. It then becomes very relevant to find out sustainable solutions to municipal solid waste management (MSWM). In this Zero waste city concept the “zero” or minimal waste to landfills creates a efficient solution to MSWM. We can not place / keep waste for future generations not even to incure unnecessary costs of maintaining unsustainable processes. Keywords: zero waste city concept, MSWM, Zero landfills approch, SWM, sustainability

The Impact of the Internalization of External Costs in the Competitiveness of Short Sea Shipping

This paper applies a methodology for computing external costs in an intermodal transport network that includes short sea shipping to explore the impact of external costs in its competitiveness. The network, which includes roads, freight railways, maritime and inland waterway connections, considers the specific characteristics of different transport alternatives and vehicle types, providing a fair comparison of the various modes. A case study focused on freight transportation between Northern Portugal and 75 destinations (NUTS2 regions) in north-western Europe is presented. The potential of different intermodal routes that include short sea shipping is assessed, including not only internal costs and times but also external costs per mode and unit of cargo. The impact of the different cost approaches in each country of transit is shown along with the progress that has been made in the integration of external costs, using the most recent EU estimates on marginal costs coverage ratios per country for freight transport modes. The results support the modal shift from road to sea in this corridor, providing means for modal comparison and for the development of short sea shipping’s image as a sustainable mode of transportation.

The Economics of Fruit and Vegetable Production Irrigated with Reclaimed Water Incorporating the Hidden Costs of Life Cycle Environmental Impacts

The estimation and quantification of external environmental costs (hidden costs) are crucial to sustainability assessments of treated wastewater reuse projects. These costs, however, are rarely considered in economic analysis studies. In this work, monetized life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) were combined into a hybrid model to calculate cradle-to-farm gate external environmental costs (EEC) and internal costs (IC) of producing 1 t of plant-based product irrigated with reclaimed water in a Mediterranean context. The total cost was calculated by combining monetized LCA and LCC results. The results for the crops under consideration were 119.4 €/t for tomatoes, 344.4 €/t for table grapes, and 557 €/t for artichokes. Our findings show that there are significant hidden costs at the farm level, with EEC accounting for 57%, 23%, and 38% of the total cost of tomatoes, table grapes, and artichokes, respectively. Electricity use for water treatment and fertilization generated most of the EEC driven by the global warming, particulate matter, acidification, and fossil resource scarcity impact categories. When compared to groundwater, the higher internal costs of reclaimed water were offset by lower external costs, particularly when supported by low-energy wastewater treatment. This demonstrates that incorporating EEC into economic analyses might generate a better understanding of the profitability of treated wastewater reuse in crop production. In Italy and the Mediterranean region, research on the sustainability of water reuse in irrigation through life cycle thinking is still limited. Using a multi-metric approach, our analysis brought new insights into both economic and environmental performance – and their tradeoff relationships in wastewater reuse for irrigation of agricultural crops. In future research, it would be of interest to use different monetization methods as well as to investigate social externalities to explore their size and role in the total external costs.

A solution for external costs beyond negotiation and taxation

This article aims to launch light on the limitations of the Coase and Pigou approach in the solution of externalities. After contextualizing the need for integration of ecological and economic approaches, we are introducing a new conceptual proposal complementary to conventional economic approaches. Whose process is guaranteed by a set of diffuse agents in the economy that partially reverses entropy formation and marginal external costs generated by also diffuse agents? The approach differs in six fundamentals from traditional theory and proposes a new way of analyzing the actions of agents capable of reducing entropy and containing part of external costs in the market economy.