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Purpose This study aims to consider environmental sustainability, a global challenge under the preview of sustainable development goals, highlighting the significance of knowledge economy in attaining sustainable aggregate demand behavior globally. For this purpose, 155 countries that have data available from 1995 to 2021 were selected. The purpose of selecting these countries is to test the global responsibility of the knowledge economy to attain environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach Results are estimated with the help of panel quantile regression. The empirical existence of aggregate demand-based environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was tested using non-linear tests. Moreover, principal component analysis has been incorporated to construct the knowledge economy index. Findings U-shaped aggregate demand-based EKC at global level is validated. However, environmental deterioration increases with an additional escalation after US$497.945m in aggregate demand. As a determinant, the knowledge economy is reducing CO2 emissions. The knowledge economy has played a significant role in global responsibility, shifting the EKC downward and extending the CO2 reduction phase for every selected country. Further, urbanization, energy intensity, financial development and trade openness significantly deteriorate the environmental quality. Originality/value This study contains the empirical existence of aggregate demand-based EKC. The role of the knowledge economy is examined through an index which is calculated by using four pillars of the knowledge economy (technology, innovations, education and institutions). This study is based on a combined panel of all the countries for which the data was available.

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, cultural change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18), led by Caroline Malone (Queens University Belfast) has explored issues of environmental fragility and Neolithic social resilience and sustainability during the Holocene period in the Maltese Islands. This, the first volume of three, presents the palaeo-environmental story of early Maltese landscapes. The project employed a programme of high-resolution chronological and stratigraphic investigations of the valley systems on Malta and Gozo. Buried deposits extracted through coring and geoarchaeological study yielded rich and chronologically controlled data that allow an important new understanding of environmental change in the islands. The study combined AMS radiocarbon and OSL chronologies with detailed palynological, molluscan and geoarchaeological analyses. These enable environmental reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes and the changing resources exploited by the islanders between the seventh and second millennia bc. The interdisciplinary studies combined with excavated economic and environmental materials from archaeological sites allows Temple landscapes to examine the dramatic and damaging impacts made by the first farming communities on the islands’ soil and resources. The project reveals the remarkable resilience of the soil-vegetational system of the island landscapes, as well as the adaptations made by Neolithic communities to harness their productivity, in the face of climatic change and inexorable soil erosion. Neolithic people evidently understood how to maintain soil fertility and cope with the inherently unstable changing landscapes of Malta. In contrast, second millennium bc Bronze Age societies failed to adapt effectively to the long-term aridifying trend so clearly highlighted in the soil and vegetation record. This failure led to severe and irreversible erosion and very different and short-lived socio-economic systems across the Maltese islands.

With the 2015 Paris Agreement pursuing efforts to limit global temperature increase to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and the “energy trilemma” goals of energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability, decarbonisation remains a priority across all of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) energy system, not just electricity. Electricity and thermal energy storage technologies can offer a host of benefits across the energy value chain through the abilityS to capture, store and then release electricity or thermal energy over a period of time. These benefits include helping capture the full potential of renewable generation and providing services such as frequency response and reserve to Great Britain’s (GB) electricity system. In addition, with the aforementioned climate targets in mind, energy storage can also play a role in facilitating the decarbonisation of other activities and sectors. Here we delve deeper into how energy storage technologies can contribute to both energy sector transformation and more broadly, decarbonisation. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of ensuring a technology-agnostic approach to the development of policy and regulation with relevance to energy storage. This ensures that storage technologies with significant potential to contribute to the ‘energy trilemma’ goals are not precluded from entering the market due to unfavourable policy and regulatory frameworks.

Abstract The consumption of takeaway food is increasing worldwide. Single-use containers used for takeaway food represent a significant source of waste and environmental impacts due to their low recyclability. Consequently, it is important to identify the best available alternatives and improvement opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of fast-food containers. For these purposes, this study estimates and compares for the first time the life cycle impacts of three most widely-used types of takeaway container: aluminium, polypropylene and extruded polystyrene. These are also compared to reusable polypropylene containers. The findings suggest that single-use polypropylene containers are the worst option for seven out of 12 impacts considered, including global warming potential. They are followed by the aluminium alternative with five highest impacts, including depletion of ozone layer and human toxicity. Overall, extruded polystyrene containers have the lowest impacts due to the lower material and electricity requirements in their manufacture. They are also the best option when compared to reused takeaway polypropylene containers, unless the latter are reused 3–39 times. The number of uses needed for the reusable “Tupperware” polypropylene food savers is even higher, ranging from 16 to 208 times, with terrestrial ecotoxicity being always higher than for extruded polystyrene, regardless of the number of uses. However, extruded polystyrene containers are currently not recycled and cannot be considered a sustainable option. If they were recycled in accordance with the European Union 2025 policy on waste packaging, most of their impacts would be reduced by >18%, while also reducing littering and negative effects on marine organisms. Most of the impacts of the other two types of container would also be reduced (>20%) through increased recycling. Implementing the European Union 2025 policy on recycling of waste packaging would reduce all the impacts by 2%–60%, including a 33% reduction in global warming potential. Based on 2025 million takeaway containers used annually in the European Union, the latter would save 61,700 t CO2 eq./yr, equivalent to the emissions of 55,000 light-duty vehicles. The outcomes of this study will be of interest to packaging manufacturers, food outlets, policy makers and consumers.

Data was either measured in situ in the field (N2O flux, soil moisture, rainfall and air temperature) or samples were taken, processed, and analysed in the laboratory (soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC), ammonium, nitrate, microbial community composition and crop yield). N2O flux data was measured on a mobile gas chromatograph (GC) system and integrated to obtain peak areas on Peak490Win10Canabis programme. The times, peak areas and sample ID were then exported into a .CHR file and imported into Flux.NET.3.3 which calculated N2O flux as an output in Excel which was exported as .csv file for deposit in EIDC. N2O flux was used to calculate cumulative N2O flux using trapezoidal integration in Excel and saved in a separate .csv file for deposit in EIDC. Soil moisture was measured on Accilmas with data stored as a .csv on a DataSnap that was downloaded and sorted by treatment and saved as a .csv file. Rainfall and air temperature were downloaded from the weather station as .csv file. Soil pH and EC were recorded manually into a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Soil ammonium and nitrate content was measured using the microplate method using a programme called Gen5. Date was exported into an Excel spreadsheet and absorbance units used to calculate ammonium/nitrate content in milligrams per kilogram using a calibration curve from a set of standards in an Excel spreadsheet. This was exported as a .csv file. Crop growth data was recorded in the field in a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Crop yield was recorded in a notebook and input into an Excel spreadsheet and exported as a .csv file. Microbial community composition was measured using 16S gene sequencing on an Illumina MiSeq. This generated raw sequencing reads which were processed using Python and filtered using QIIME v1.3.1. creating asv.count.table.csv of counts of each Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) per sample and taxa.table.csv of the taxonomic lineage for each ASVs. This dataset contains field data on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, microbial community composition, crop yield and growth and soil biochemical properties. The field trial consisted of three different treatments of control, conventional microplastic addition and biodegradable microplastic addition where winter barley was grown. The data presented are from field and laboratory measurements. Data was collected by the data authors. The field trial was carried out from September 2020 to July 2021 at Henfaes Field Centre, UK. Research was funded through NERC Grant NE/V005871/1. Do agricultural microplastics undermine food security and sustainable development in developing countries?

Driven by the need to develop a wide variety of products with low environmental impact, biorefineries need to emerge as highly integrated facilities. This becomes effective when overall mass and energy integration through a centralised utility system design is undertaken. An approach combining process integration, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission analyses is shown in this paper for Jatropha biorefinery design, primarily producing biodiesel using oil-based heterogeneously catalysed transesterification or green diesel using hydrotreatment. These processes are coupled with gasification of husk to produce syngas. Syngas is converted into end products, heat, power and methanol in the biodiesel case or hydrogen in the green diesel case. Anaerobic digestion of Jatropha by-products such as fruit shell, cake and/or glycerol has been considered to produce biogas for power generation. Combustion of fruit shell and cake is considered to provide heat. Heat recovery within biodiesel or green diesel production and the design of the utility (heat and power) system are also shown. The biorefinery systems wherein cake supplies heat for oil extraction and seed drying while fruit shells and glycerol provide power generation via anaerobic digestion into biogas achieve energy efficiency of 53 % in the biodiesel system and 57 % in the green diesel system. These values are based on high heating values (HHV) of Jatropha feedstocks, HHV of the corresponding products and excess power generated. Results showed that both systems exhibit an energy yield per unit of land of 83 GJ ha−1. The global warming potential from GHG emissions of the net energy produced (i.e. after covering energy requirements by the biorefinery systems) was 29 g CO2-eq MJ−1, before accounting credits from displacement of fossil-based energy by bioenergy exported from the biorefineries. Using a systematic integration approach for utilisation of whole Jatropha fruit, it is shown that global warming potential and fossil primary energy use can be reduced significantly if the integrated process schemes combined with optimised cultivation and process parameters are adopted in Jatropha-based biorefineries.

AbstractThe integration of power plants and desalination systems has attracted increasing attention over the past few years as an effective solution to tackle sustainable development and climate change issues. In this light, this paper introduces a novel modelling and optimization approach for a combined-cycle power plant (CCPP) integrated with reverse osmosis (RO) and multi-effect distillation (MED) desalination systems. The integrated CCPP and RO–MED desalination system is thermodynamically modelled utilizing MATLAB and EES software environments, and the results are validated via Thermoflex software simulations. Comprehensive energy, exergic, exergoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental (4E) analyses are performed to assess the performance of the integrated system. Furthermore, a new multi-objective water cycle algorithm (MOWCA) is implemented to optimize the main performance parameters of the integrated system. Finally, a real-world case study is performed based on Iran's Shahid Salimi Neka power plant. The results reveal that the system exergy efficiency is increased from 8.4 to 51.1% through the proposed MOWCA approach, and the energy and freshwater costs are reduced by 8.4% and 29.4%, respectively. The latter results correspond to an environmental impact reduction of 14.2% and 33.5%. Hence, the objective functions are improved from all exergic, exergoeconomic, and exergoenvironmental perspectives, proving the approach to be a valuable tool towards implementing more sustainable combined power plants and desalination systems.

The Buxton Climate Change Impacts study was established in 1992 on a steep daleside of calcareous grassland outside Buxton, Derbyshire, UK. In five replicate blocks of 3 x 3 m plots, the vegetation has been subjected to climate treatments of winter heating (3C above ambient, Nov-April), summer drought (no rain, July-Aug), summer augmented rainfaill (20% above the long-term average, June-Sept), and two interaction treatments (heating-drought, heating-watered) in addition to replicated controls. The grassland is maintained in a short turf to simulate sheep and cattle grazing each autumn (Oct). In addition to annual point quadrat touches conducted at the whole-plot (9 m2) scale, permanent microsite quadrats were established within each plot in 2008 at the 100 cm2 scale. Species cover and environmental parameters have been monitored in microsites annually (2009-2011 controls only). This data package contains microsite soil depth and pH data; another package contains species cover data.

Urea is the most common nitrogen (N) fertilizer in agriculture, due to its cheaper price and high N content. Although the reciprocal influence between NO3- and NH4+ nutrition are well known, urea (U) interactions with these N-inorganic forms are poorly studied. Here, the responses of two tomato genotypes to ammonium nitrate (AN), U alone or in combination were investigated. Significant differences in root and shoot biomass between genotypes were observed. Under AN+U supply, Linosa showed higher biomass compared to UC82, exhibiting also higher values for many root architectural traits. Linosa showed higher Nitrogen Uptake (NUpE) and Utilization Efficiency (NUtE) compared to UC82, under AN+U nutrition. Interestingly, Linosa exhibited also a significantly higher DUR3 transcript abundance. These results underline the beneficial effect of AN+U nutrition, highlighting new molecular and physiological strategies for selecting crops that can be used for more sustainable agriculture. The data suggest that translocation and utilization (NUtE) might be a more important component of NUE than uptake (NUpE) in tomato. Genetic variation could be a source for useful NUE traits in tomato; further experiments are needed to dissect the NUtE components that confer a higher ability to utilize N in Linosa.