Environment & Technology
Abstract
• LCA is a well-known assessment tool that identifies and provides insights on the
environmental impacts of products and services over their lifecycle. The guidance provided
by the existing manuals typically applies to modelling and assessing environmental impacts
ex-post, meaning that information is available from empirical experience after products have
been commercially in use for extended periods of time. This information is not available if
LCA is applied in an ex-ante manner before a technology is commercially deployed at scale.
We identify the major challenges of applying LCA in an ex-ante manner and propose a route
forward in dealing with these challenges that combines intuitions from other disciplinary
fields. The first challenge is how to model consistent future foreground systems for the
incumbent and new technology systems. Learning curves and scenario approaches are the
way forward. The second challenge is how to model future background systems. Here a
solution is to transform existing LCI databases towards future contexts, informed by the
Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that provide scenarios in line with the Shared
Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Finally, uncertainty in ex-ante LCA is of a different nature
as in ex-post LCAs. The main difference with conventional LCA studies is the highly
uncertain information for the future. To acknowledge this. considerate attention should be
attributed to the discussion on these uncertainties, both in the design of the assessment and
the data used. Responsive evaluation can play a supportive role here. This will increase the
transparency and efficacy of the results because the relevant stakeholders and experts are
involved. In this way technology designers and other stakeholders derive insights on the
influence of design choices or contextual factors (that are important, but hard to influence) on
the potential environmental impacts of their foreseen technology. © 2020 The Authors
• Data infrastructures, economic processes, and governance models of digital platforms are
increasingly pervading urban sectors and spheres of urban life. This phenomenon is known as
platformization, which has in turn given rise to the phenomena of platform society, where
platforms have permeated the core of urban societies. A recent manifestation of
platformization is the Metaverse, a global platform project launched by Meta (formerly
Facebook) as a globally operating platform company. The Metaverse represents an idea of a
hypothetical “parallel virtual world” that incarnate ways of living and working in virtual
cities as an alternative to smart cities of the future. Indeed, with emerging innovative
technologies—such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, the IoT, and Digital Twins—
providing rich datasets and advanced computational understandings of human behavior, the
Metaverse has the potential to redefine city designing activities and service provisioning
towards increasing urban efficiencies, accountabilities, and quality performance. However,
there still remain ethical, human, social, and cultural concerns as to the Metaverse’s influence
upon the quality of human social interactions and its prospective scope in reconstructing the
quality of urban life. This paper undertakes an upper-level literature review of the area of the
Metaverse from a broader perspective. Further, it maps the emerging products and services of
the Metaverse, and explores their potential contributions to smart cities with respect to their
virtual incarnation, with a particular focus on the environmental, economic, and social goals
of sustainability. This study may help urban policy makers to better understand the
opportunities and implications of the Metaverse upon tech-mediated practices and applied
urban agendas, as well as assess the positives and negatives of this techno-urban vision. This
paper also offers thoughts regarding the argument that the Metaverse has disruptive and
substantive effects on forms of reconstructing reality in an increasingly platformized urban
society. This will hopefully stimulate prospective research and further critical perspectives on
the topic. © 2022 by the authors.
• Integration of renewable energy sources in electrical energy networks, is significantly
increased due to economic and environmental issues in recent years and has appeared new
challenges in the operation of power systems. Additionally, the power to gas (P2G)
technology is a practical solution for accommodating the variability of the power output of
wind energy sources, which are effective in reducing pollutant gas emissions considering
their gas or power injection to the network at on-peak time intervals. Moreover, natural gas
(NG)-fired generation plants can be introduced as practical solutions for decreasing power
output variations of renewable sources due to their high ramp rates and quick response. This
study proposes a multi-objective two-stage stochastic unit commitment scheme for integrated
gas and electricity networks taking into account novel flexible energy sources such as P2G
technology and demand response (DR) programs as well as high penetration of wind turbines.
In this paper, P2G technology is introduced as a promising option for increasing the wind
power dispatch in power systems. In addition, DR program as a cost-environmental effective
method is modeled as a price-responsive bidding mechanism that is influential in decreasing
the operation cost of the integrated network by shifting load from on-peak time intervals to
off-peak time intervals. The introduced scheme has been implemented on an integrated 6-bus
power system with 6-node gas networks by analyzing the performance of the framework in
terms of operation cost and release of environmental pollutant gases. The results show that
the simultaneous consideration of power-to-gas technology and demand response program
reduces environmental pollution in addition to reducing costs. The investigation of the
operation cost of the whole integrated system shows that application of both P2G and DR is
beneficial in decreasing cost by 2.42% and 1.78% with respect to consideration of each of the
P2G and DR, respectively. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd
• As lockdown eases, economic activities resume in Pakistan. If the country continues to
follow business-as-usual (BAU) then it is anticipated that carbon output could surge past pre-
COVID-19 levels – that means more disasters in future. Thus, it is an unprecedented
opportunity to shift from BAU and achieve carbon-neutral and nature-positive economic
recovery – green economic recovery (GER). To fuel the GER, access to modern, equitable,
affordable and sustainable energy is paramount. This study explores waste-to-energy (WtE)
as an alternative green fuel for GER. Seven WtE technologies are prioritized based on the
concept of energy trilemma – energy security, energy equity, and environmental
sustainability. For the evaluation, an energy trilemma based decision support framework is
developed using most prominent multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. The
fuzzy set theory is integrated with MCDM methods to minimize uncertainty in results.
Sixteen experts are engaged to score each WtE technology with respect to every energy
trilemma dimension and sub-dimension. Gasification technology is found to be the most
feasible option for WtE generation in Pakistan whereas Torrefaction technology is least
favorable. It is concluded that the need to shift towards sustainable energy is more than ever
to limit the carbon emission and prevent future crisis. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
• The concept of circular economy is increasingly receiving attention in different domains,
including strategic management, operations management, and technology management. It
requires companies to design their business model (i.e., the value network, the relationships
with the supply chain partners, and the value propositions towards customers) around a new
concept of sustainable development that reduces consumption of natural resources and
preserves the environment. However, extant research falls short in terms of explaining how
companies design their business model according to the circular economy principles. Starting
from this premise, the present paper provides a systematic review of the literature on the
design of business models in the context of circular economy, aiming to offer an overview of
the state of research and outline a promising research agenda. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd and ERP Environment
