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Abstract Biomass based power plants are one of the few renewable energy sources (RES) units that may be used as base load technologies, contributing also to the reduction of external energy dependency and of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The availability, heterogeneity and cost of the resource are however important barriers to the effective development and spread of these technologies. This paper aims to make a contribution to the evaluation of biomass power plants based on dedicated energy crops. The particular case of Portugal is analyzed and the strategic, environmental and economic interest of the project is evaluated under the present RES support schemes. The results suggest that the value of the assumed Feed-in Tariff (FIT) may not be enough to attract private investors’ interest for these projects. The need for the creation of a specific FIT for this kind of biomass is highlighted and may be justified both by the perceived project risk and by the expected strategic and environmental value of these investments.

Environmental sustainability is driving an intense search for “green materials”. Biobased plastics have emerged as a promising alternative. Their building blocks can now be obtained from diverse biomass, by-products, and organic residues due to the advances in biorefineries and bioprocessing technologies, decreasing the demand for fossil fuel resources and carbon footprint. Novel biobased polymers with high added value and improved properties and functionalities have been developed to apply diverse economic sectors. However, the real opportunities and risks of such novel biobased plastic solutions have raised scientific and public awareness. This paper provides a critical review on the recent advances in biobased polymers chemistry and emerging (bio)technologies that underpin their production and discusses the potential for biodegradation, recycling, environmental safety, and toxicity of these biobased solutions.

Data on electricity consumption is crucial for assessing and modeling energy systems, making it a key element of sustainable urban planning. However, many countries in the Global South struggle with a shortage of statistically valid, geocoded, and disaggregated household-level data. This paper aims to develop a generic methodology for the generation of such a database in terms of electricity consumption. The methodology was tested in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, with a focus on all single-family residential building types of the inner city. Discrete data on buildings is obtained through combined information products derived from very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, field surveys, and computer assisted personal interviewing. In total, 509 valid geocoded survey datasets were used to evaluate and model household electricity consumption, as well as electrical appliance ownership. The study's findings reveal that the arithmetic mean of specific electricity consumption was 3.66 kWh per household per day and 345 kWh per capita per year in 2015. By subdividing the data into distinct building types as well as their spatial location, and weighting the specific values according to their proportion in the study area, a more accurate mean value of 1.88 kWh per household per day and 160 kWh per capita per year was obtained. Applying this weighted mean to extrapolate household electricity consumption for the study area, in conjunction with the sample's precision level, resulted in an estimate of 126–137 GWh for the year 2015. In contrast, using the arithmetic mean would have led to values twice as high, even exceeding the total electricity consumption of the entire city, including multi-family and non-residential buildings. The study highlights the significance of on-site data collection combined with geospatial mapping techniques in enhancing of understanding of residential energy systems. Using building types as indicators to distinguish between households with contrasting electricity consumption and electrical appliance load levels can address the challenges posed by rapid urban growth in the Global South. This proposed method can assist municipal administrations in establishing a database that can be updated resource-efficiently at regular intervals by acquiring new satellite images.

At this time, efforts are being made on a worldwide scale to accomplish sustainable development objectives. It has, thus, now become essential to investigate the part of technology in the accomplishment of these Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as this will enable us to circumvent any potential conflicts that may arise. The importance of wastewater management in the accomplishment of these goals has been highlighted in the study. The research focuses on the role of fourth industrial revolution in meeting the Sustainable Goals for 2030. Given that water is the most important resource on the planet and since 11 of the 17 Sustainable Goals are directly related to having access to clean water, effective water management is the most fundamental need for achieving these goals. The age of Industry 4.0 has ushered in a variety of new solutions in many industrial sectors, including manufacturing, water, energy, healthcare, and electronics. This paper examines the present creative solutions in water treatment from an Industry-4.0 viewpoint, focusing on big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and several other technologies. The study has correlated the various concepts of Industry 4.0 along with water and wastewater management and also discusses the prior work carried out in this field with help of different technologies. In addition to proposing a way for explaining the operation of I4.0 in water treatment through a systematic diagram, the paper makes suggestions for further research as well.

The Dairy-4-Future project focuses on improving the sustainability of dairy farming in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal. Improvement in dairying sustainability can be achieved by supporting and expanding the positive impacts and services that dairy farming has upon, and offer to, the local communities and by reducing the disservices, or negative impacts associated with dairying. To create a qualitative identification of a relevant, ranked list of items or issues associated with dairying in each territory in the project, interactive workshops with local stakeholders were organized in each regional case study. Stakeholders identified positive or negative impacts of local dairy farming on their territories, broken down into four specific categories: provisioning (e.g., food), rural vitality, environmental quality, cultural heritage, and quality of life. A total of 165 services and 135 dysservices were identified, balanced across the four categories. From these services and dysservices, groupings showed correlations between items and/or territories (for example, between Northern Ireland and Cornwall; Southern Ireland and Normandy; Galicia and Brittany). The impact of farm system type, specifically grassland, played a strong role in the linking of services and dysservices. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2022-03-03-010 Full Text: PDF

The concept of smart cities has gained significant attention due to the potential of smart cities to optimize city services and enhance citizens’ quality of life. Cities are investing in digital transformation to become smarter, sustainable, and resilient. Therefore, there is a need to build a comprehensive and holistic model to assess smart city initiatives. This paper aims to develop a model that can capture the maturity of smart city adoption across various functional domains. These domains are divided into focus areas that capture different dimensions of a smart city and grouped into seven groups: ICT, economy, environment, social, resources, services, and governance. Each focus area has a set of maturity levels that describe the capabilities and outcomes of the city at different stages of development. To develop the model, the focus areas were extracted from the literature based on 16 models that have been reviewed. Assessing these models helped in identifying gaps and building the foundation of the model. Using the information extracted from the literature, a focus area model was designed and developed. The model development included seven main phases, which were: scope, design, populate, test, deploy, and maintain. The current paper validates the proposed model using the Delphi method, which involves the participation of a panel of sixty field experts. The experts evaluated the model’s correctness and completeness based on their experience and provided feedback. This feedback was used to revise and finalize the model. The smart city maturity model provides a framework for benchmarking, planning, and improving smart city initiatives. Cities can use the model to measure their performance and evaluate their weaknesses and strengths. The model is also the most comprehensive in terms of the scope of the focus areas included, and the results show that the model has a high level of accuracy and consistency and can effectively assess smart city adoption.

AbstractEuropean Community (EC) Horizon-funded projects and Earth Observation-based Consortia aim to create sustainable value for Space, Land, and Oceans. They typically focus on addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Many of these projects (e.g. Commercialization and Innovation Actions) have an ambitious challenge to ensure that partners share core competencies to simultaneously achieve technological and commercial success and sustainability after the end of the EC funds. To achieve this ambitious challenge, Horizon projects must have a proper governance model and a systematized process that can manage the existing paradoxical tensions involving numerous European partners and their respective agendas and stakeholders. This article presents the VCW-Value Creation Wheel (Lages in J Bus Res 69: 4849–4855, 2016), as a framework that has its roots back in 1995 and has been used since 2015 in the context of numerous Space Business, Earth Observation, and European Community (EC) projects, to address complex problems and paradoxical tensions. In this article, we discuss six of these paradoxical tensions that large Horizon Consortia face in commercialization, namely when managing innovation ecosystems, co-creating, taking digitalization, decision-making, tech-transfer, and sustainability actions. We discuss and evaluate how alliance partners could find the optimal balance between (1) cooperation, competition, and coopetition perspectives; (2) financial, environmental, and social value creation; (3) tech-push and market-pull orientations; (4) global and local market solutions; (5) functionality driven and human-centered design (UX/UI); (6) centralized and decentralized online store approaches. We discuss these challenges within the case of the EC H2020 NextLand project answering the call for greening the economy in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We analyze NextLand Online Store, and its Business and Innovation Ecosystem while considering the input of its different stakeholders, such as NextLand’s commercial team, service providers, users, advisors, EC referees, and internal and external stakeholders. Preliminary insights from a twin project in the field of Blue Economy (EC H2020 NextOcean), are also used to support our arguments. Partners, referees, and EC officers should address the tensions mentioned in this article during the referee and approval processes in the pre-grant and post-grant agreement stages. Moreover, we propose using the Value Creation Wheel (VCW) method and the VCW meta-framework as a systematized process that allows us to co-create and manage the innovation ecosystem while engaging all the stakeholders and presenting solutions to address these tensions. The article concludes with theoretical implications and limitations, managerial and public policy implications, and lessons for Horizon Europe, earth observation, remote sensing, and space business projects.

Forest Flux https://www.forestflux.eu/ will renew forestry value-added services in Earth Observation (EO) by creating and piloting cloud-based services for committed users on forest carbon assimilation and structural variable prediction. Forest Flux exploits the explosive increase of high-resolution EO data from the Copernicus program and developments of cloud computing technology. It implements a world-first service platform for high-resolution maps of traditional forestry variables together with forest carbon fluxes. Forest Flux will allow the users to improve the profitability of forest management while taking care of ecological sustainability. The Forest Flux services are implemented on the Forestry Thematic Exploitation cloud platform https://f-tep.com/. In 2020, nearly 700 thematic maps on forest stand and carbon flux variables were delivered to nine specific users in a form that was applicable to their operational forest management systems. The last project year 2021 focuses on map product refinement and improving user services, which eventually lead to operational service concepts.