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The design and assessment of net-zero buildings commonly focus exclusively on the operational phase, ignoring the embodied environmental impacts over the building life cycle. An analysis is presented on the consequences of integrating embodied impacts into the assessment of the environmental advantageousness of net-zero concepts. Fundamental issues needing consideration in the design process - based on the evaluation of primary energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions - are examined by comparing three net-zero building design and assessment cases: (1) no embodied impacts included, net balance limited to the operation stage only; (2) embodied impacts included but evaluated separately from the operation stage; and (3) embodied impacts included with the operation stage in a life cycle approach. A review of recent developments in research, standardization activities and design practice and the presentation of a case study of a residential building in Norway highlight the critical importance of performance indicator definitions and system boundaries. A practical checklist is presented to guide the process of incorporating embodied impacts across the building life cycle phases in net-zero design. Its implications are considered on overall environmental impact assessment of buildings. Research and development challenges, as well as recommendations for designers and other stakeholders, are identified.

Urban environments provide opportunities for greater resource efficiency and the fostering of urban ecosystems. Brownfield areas are a typical example of underused land resources. Brownfield redevelopment projects that include green infrastructure allow for further ecosystems to be accommodated in urban environments. Green infrastructure also deliver important urban ecosystem services (UES) to local residents, which can greatly contribute to improving quality of life in cities. In this case study, we quantify and assess the economic value of five UES for a brownfield redevelopment project in Antwerp, Belgium. The assessment is carried out using the “Nature Value Explorer” modelling tool. The case includes three types of green infrastructure (green corridor,infiltration gullies and green roofs) primarily intended to connect nature reserves on the urban periphery and to avoid surface runoff. The green infrastructure also provides air filtration, climate regulation, carbon sequestration and recreation ecosystem services. The value of recreation far exceeds other values, including the value of avoided runoff. The case study raises crucial questions as to whether existing UES valuation approaches adequately account for the range of UES provided and whether such approaches can be improved to achieve more accurate and reliable value estimates in future analyses.

Abstract Fodder for feeding pork and poultry requires a large amount of cultivated and processed agricultural crops, which are often related to greenhouse gas emissions from land-use change (LUC). Given the rapid growth in meat production in Brazil for domestic consumption and international export, the link between LUC emissions and consumption of pork and poultry meat is central to evaluating the role of Brazilian meat production and the implications for international climate policies. In this paper, we first estimate LUC emissions from soybean production destined to feed pork and poultry in Brazil during the period 2008–2012. Second, we allocate such emissions to domestic and international consumption of pork and poultry meat. Concerning international consumption, Brazilian export of meat to 189 countries is evaluated. Although the majority of the LUC emissions from soybean production are tied to the domestic consumption, 17% and 39% of the emissions embodied in Brazilian pork and poultry, respectively, are exported to other countries. The most prominent destinations of Brazilian pork and poultry in terms of embodied LUC emissions are Eastern Europe, Asia and South America. In the case of pork, the fluxes of emissions from Brazil to Ukraine (1.28 Mt CO2-eq) and Russia (1.18 Mt CO2-eq) are particularly large. In the case of poultry, the largest transfers of embodied emissions are from Brazil to developing countries and especially the Middle East. These results are relevant to environmental policies and international agreements aimed at achieving the sustainability of Brazil's meat sector.

Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the “just transition” strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of “just transition” today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, we add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally. Analytically, our goal is to place the various approaches to a “just transition” within a heuristic framework of environmental justice that is explicit about power relations when demanding justice, two themes central to this special issue.

The implementation of resource management strategies aimed at reducing the impacts of the anthropogenic activities system requires a comprehensive approach to evaluate on the whole the environmental burdens of productive processes and to identify the best recovery strategies from both an environmental and an economic point of view. In this framework, an analytical methodology based on the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), ExternE and Comprehensive Analysis was developed to perform an in-depth investigation of energy systems. The LCA methodology, largely utilised by the international scientific community for the assessment of the environmental performances of technologies, combined with Comprehensive Analysis allows modelling the overall system of anthropogenic activities, as well as sub-systems, the economic consequences of the whole set of environmental damages. Moreover, internalising external costs into partial equilibrium models, as those utilised by Comprehensive Analysis, can be useful to identify the best paths for implementing technology innovation and strategies aimed to a more sustainable energy supply and use. This paper presents an integrated application of these three methodologies to a local scale case study (the Val D'Agri area in Basilicata, Southern Italy), aimed to better characterise the environmental impacts of the energy system, with particular reference to extraction activities. The innovative methodological approach utilised takes advantage from the strength points of each methodology with an added value coming from their integration as emphasised by the main results obtained by the scenario analysis.

Grazing by large ungulates often increases plant species richness in grasslands of moderate to high productivity. In a mesic North American grassland with and without the presence of bison ( Bos bison), a native ungulate grazer, three non-exclusive hypotheses for increased plant species richness in grazed grasslands were evaluated: (1) bison grazing enhances levels of resource (light and N) availability, enabling species that depend on higher resource availability to co-occur; (2) spatial heterogeneity in resource availability is enhanced by bison, enabling coexistence of a greater number of plant species; (3) increased species turnover (i.e. increased species colonization and establishment) in grazed grassland is associated with enhanced plant species richness. We measured availability and spatial heterogeneity in light, water and N, and calculated species turnover from long-term data in grazed and ungrazed sites in a North American tallgrass prairie. Both regression and path analyses were performed to evaluate the potential of the three hypothesized mechanisms to explain observed patterns of plant species richness under field conditions. Experimental grazing by bison increased plant species richness by 25% over an 8-year period. Neither heterogeneity nor absolute levels of soil water or available N were related to patterns of species richness in grazed and ungrazed sites. However, high spatial heterogeneity in light and higher rates of species turnover were both strongly related to increases in plant species richness in grazed areas. This suggests that creation of a mosaic of patches with high and low biomass (the primary determinant of light availability in mesic grasslands) and promotion of a dynamic species pool are the most important mechanisms by which grazers affect species richness in high productivity grasslands.

Abstract The management of failure analysis has a strategic importance within a refinery from the organizational, engineering and economic point of view. The determination of an algorithm, that allows a methodical and as far as possible automatic approach to management of failure data, can make substantial improvements in the organization of work and in the decision-making processes. A panel of expert, made up of academicians and refinery operators, was formed in order to develop a Risk-Based Inspection and Maintenance (RBI&M) procedure. RBI&M procedure developed comprises six modules: identification of the scope, functional analysis, risk assessment, risk evaluation, operation selection and planning, J-factor computation and operation realization. Taking into consideration historical data regarding Near Accidents, Operating Drawbacks, Occupational and Environmental Accidents occurred in refinery over the last years the panel of expert defined a risk matrix in order to evaluate the risk associated to critical events and maintenance activities. Five probability classes and five severity categories, that take into account four impact categories (Health and Safety, Environmental, Economic and Reputation), have been defined. This paper reports the application of the RBI&M method to two specific stages in the maintenance activities of the refinery, i.e. the oil refinery turnaround and work orders management. The panel of expert developed heuristic methods in order to apply RBI&M procedure to the two cases allowing the refinery to minimize the overall risk taking into consideration the limits in term of time and budget (in turnaround case) and of human resources (in the management of work orders). The results have highlighted a clear improvement in the indices which measure the quality of maintenance.