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This study focuses on formulating the most sustainable concrete by incorporating recycled concrete aggregates and other products retrieved from construction and demolition (C&D) activities. Both recycled coarse aggregates (RCA) and recycled fine aggregates (RFA) are firstly used to fully replace the natural coarse and fine aggregates in the concrete mix design. Later, the cement rich ultrafine particles, recycled glass powder and mineral fibres recovered from construction and demolition wastes (CDW) are further incorporated at a smaller rate either as cement substituent or as supplementary additives. Remarkable properties are noticed when the RCA (4–12 mm) and RFA (0.25–4 mm) are fully used to replace the natural aggregates in a new concrete mix. The addition of recycled cement rich ultrafines (RCU), Recycled glass ultrafines (RGU) and recycled mineral fibres (RMF) into recycled concrete improves the modulus of elasticity. The final concrete, which comprises more than 75% (wt.) of recycled components/materials, is believed to be the most sustainable and green concrete mix. Mechanical properties and durability of this concrete have been studied and found to be within acceptable limits, indicating the potential of recycled aggregates and other CDW components in shaping sustainable and circular construction practices. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from EU Horizon 2020 Project VEEP ‘‘Cost-Effective Recycling of C&DW in High Added Value Energy Efficient Prefabricated Concrete Compo-nents for Massive Retrofitting of our Built Environment” (No.723582).

Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) constitute the core of a number of emerging technologies with a high potential for treating urban wastewater due to a fascinating reaction mechanism—the electron transfer between bacteria and electrodes to transform metabolism into electrical current. In the current work, we focus on the model electroactive microorganism Geobacter sulfurreducens to explore both the design of new start-up procedures and electrochemical operations. Our chemostat-grown plug and play cells, were able to reduce the start-up period by 20-fold while enhancing chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal by more than 6-fold during this period. Moreover, a filter-press based bioreactor was successfully tested for both acetate-supplemented synthetic wastewater and real urban wastewater. This proof-of-concept pre-pilot treatment included a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) followed in time by a microbial fuel cell (MFC) to finally generate electrical current of ca. 20 A·m−2 with a power of 10 W·m−2 while removing 42 g COD day−1·m−2. The effective removal of acetate suggests a potential use of this modular technology for treating acetogenic wastewater where Geobacter sulfurreducens outcompetes other organisms.

To reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the European Union (EU) has targets for utilizing energy from renewable sources. By 2030, a minimum of 3.5% of energy in the EU���s transport sector should come from renewable biological sources, such as crop residues. This paper analyzed EU���s ���advanced bioethanol��� potential from wheat straw and maize stover and evaluated its environmental (land, water, and carbon) footprint. We differentiated between gross and net bioethanol output, the latter by subtracting the energy inputs in production. Results suggest that the annual amount of the sustainably harvestable wheat straw and maize stover is 81.9 Megatonnes (Mt) at field moisture weight (65.3 Mt as dry weight), yielding 470 PJ as gross (404 PJ as net) advanced bioethanol output. Calculated net advanced bioethanol can replace 2.95% of EU transport sector���s energy consumption. EU���s advanced bioethanol has a land footprint of 0.28 m2 MJ���1 for wheat straw and 0.18 m2 MJ���1 for maize stover. The average water footprint of advanced bioethanol is 173 L MJ���1 for wheat straw and 113 L MJ���1 for maize stover. The average carbon footprint per unit of advanced bioethanol is 19.4 and 19.6 g CO2eq MJ���1 for wheat straw and maize stover, respectively. Using advanced bioethanol can lead to emission savings, but EU���s advanced bioethanol production potential is insufficient to achieve EU���s target of a minimum share of 3.5% of advanced biofuels in the transport sector by 2030, and the associated water and land footprints are not smaller than footprints of conventional bioethanol.

Dynamics of societal material stocks such as buildings and infrastructures and their spatial patterns drive surging resource use and emissions. Building up and maintaining stocks requires large amounts of resources; currently stock-building materials amount to almost 60% of all materials used by humanity. Buildings, infrastructures and machinery shape social practices of production and consumption, thereby creating path dependencies for future resource use. They constitute the physical basis of the spatial organization of most socio-economic activities, for example as mobility networks, urbanization and settlement patterns and various other infrastructures. This dataset features a detailed map of material stocks for the whole of Germany on a 10m grid based on high resolution Earth Observation data (Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2), crowd-sourced geodata (OSM) and material intensity factors. Temporal extent The map is representative for ca. 2018. Data format Per federal state, the data come in tiles of 30x30km (see shapefile). The projection is EPSG:3035. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. The dataset features area and mass for different street types area and mass for different rail types area and mass for other infrastructure area, volume and mass for different building types Masses are reported as total values, and per material category. Units area in m² height in m volume in m³ mass in t for infrastructure and buildings Further information For further information, please see the publication or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at). A web-visualization of this dataset is available here. Visit our website to learn more about our project MAT_STOCKS - Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society. Publication Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Schug, F., Frantz, D., Virág, D., Plutzar, C., Gruhler, K., Lederer, J., Schiller, G. , Fishman, T., Lanau, M., Gattringer, A., Kemper, T., Liu, G., Tanikawa, H., van der Linden, S., Hostert, P. (accepted): High-resolution maps of material stocks in buildings and infrastructures in Austria and Germany. Environmental Science & Technology Funding This research was primarly funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MAT_STOCKS, grant agreement No 741950). ML and GL acknowledge funding by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (CityWeight, 6111-00555B), ML thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; project Multi-Scale, Circular Economic Potential of Non-Residential Building Scale, EP/S029273/1), JL acknowledges funding by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project ESR17-067, TF acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2706/19.

Bioenergy villages can be defined as villages, municipalities, settlements or communities, which produce and use most of their energy from local bioenergy and other renewable energy sources. A bioenergy village approach has not been applied in Macedonia yet, and it is at a nascent stage of implementation in other South-Eastern European countries. This work aims to integrate a techno-economic, social and environmental assessment and an implementation strategy into a bioenergy village concept, which is not often seen in works dedicated to bioenergy villages and biomass based heating systems. The assessment was conducted by means of energy audit and project-related tools, whilst the strategy was composed by bioenergy working group meetings. Results show that a biomass based district heating system is a more attractive solution for heating several public buildings instead of a fossil fuelled system, with numerous associated benefits. Such concepts can be replicated with variety of renewables, thus contributing to sustainable development pathways of small communities.

AbstractThermochemical biorefineries for the production of chemicals and materials can play an important role in the bioeconomy. However, their economic viability is often questioned under the premise of the economy of scale. This paper presents a regional, modular biorefinery concept for the production of the platform chemicals hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), furfural and phenols from the lignocellulosic perennial miscanthus, which can be cultivated on marginal and degraded areas. The paper focuses on the question of the minimum selling price of HMF and the optimal plant size for this purpose, using the region of Baden‐Württemberg, Germany, as an example. Based on small pilot plant results, a scalable process simulation was created via AspenPlus. This allows different scenarios and process combinations of this multi‐output biorefinery concept to be compared with each other. Using this, a minimum sales price for the main product HMF is calculated using methods of dynamic investment cost calculation according to the net present value method. Based on this, the plant capacity was scaled. The scenarios and sensitivity analyses show that, with an accuracy of ±15%, regional biorefineries could already offer platform chemicals at prices of 2.21–2.90 EUR/kg HMF at the current stage of development. This corresponds to three to four times the price of today's comparative fossil base chemicals and is thus a competitive option from the authors’ point of view. The local biomass and the heat prices were identified as the main influencing factors. As a result, the selection of the location will have a decisive influence on the economic viability of such concepts in the case of further development and optimization of the process in first demonstration plants.

This paper analyses the impact of postponing global mitigation action on abatement costs and energy systems changes in China and India. It compares energy-system changes and mitigation costs from a global and two national energy-system models under two global emission pathways with medium likelihood of meeting the 2 °C target: a least-cost pathway and a pathway that postpones ambitious mitigation action, starting from the Copenhagen Accord pledges. Both pathways have similar 2010–2050 cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The analysis shows that postponing mitigation action increases the lock-in in less energy efficient technologies and results in much higher cumulative mitigation costs. The models agree that carbon capture and storage (CCS) and nuclear energy are important mitigation technologies, while the shares of biofuels and other renewables vary largely over the models. Differences between India and China with respect to the timing of emission reductions and the choice of mitigation measures relate to differences in projections of rapid economic change, capital stock turnover and technological development. Furthermore, depending on the way it is implemented, climate policy could increase indoor air pollution, but it is likely to provide synergies for energy security. These relations should be taken into account when designing national climate policies.