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Wood biomass is turned into industrial fuel through chipping. The efficiency of chipping depends on many factors, including chipper knife wear. Chipper knife wear was determined through a long-term follow-up study, conducted at a waste wood recycling yard. Knife wear determined a sharp drop of productivity (>20%) and a severe decay in product quality. Dry sharpening with a grinder mitigated this effect, but it could not replace proper wet sharpening. Increasing the frequency of wet sharpening sessions determined a moderate increase of knife depreciation cost, but it could drastically enhance machine performance and reduce biomass processing cost. Since benefits largely exceed costs, increasing the frequency of wet sharpening sessions may be an effective measure for reducing overall chipping cost. If the main goal of a chipper operator is to increase productivity and/or decrease fuel consumption, then managing knife wear should be a primary target. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The transition to a low carbon future is starting to affect landscapes around the world. In order for this landscape transformation to be sustainable, renewable energy technologies should not cause critical trade-offs between the provision of energy and that of other ecosystem services such as food production. This literature review advances the body of knowledge on sustainable energy transition with special focus on ecosystem services-based approaches and methods. Two key issues emerge from this review: only one sixth of the published applications on the relation between renewable energy and landscape make use of the ecosystem service framework. Secondly, the applications that do address ecosystem services for landscape planning and design lack efficient methods and spatial reference systems that accommodate both cultural and regulating ecosystem services. Future research efforts should be directed to further advancing the spatial reference systems, the use of participatory mapping and landscape visualizations tools for cultural ecosystem services and the elaboration of landscape design principles.

Since 2007, a range of new modeling approaches and tools have been developed for sustainability impact assessment (SIA), but a lack of universal acceptance of SIA tools in applied policy making is observed. The current article gives an overview of experiences from several European and international projects, critically reviews the selected SIA tools and then discusses a number of reasons for the observed disconnect of the tools with the potential users. Largely based on the experiences of the presented SIA tools focusing land use policy advice, a decision tree is designed, which may facilitate an adequate, region and developmental phase specific selection of tool-box components for the development of SIA tools in future. Elements to ensure end-user participation are also integrated in the decision tree in order to increase the likelihood of the tool in applied land use policy advice. In addition, the Challenges in SIA tool development and use are further discussed.

Corporate social performance (CSP) is assumed to have a positive impact on macroeconomic sustainability, but empirical evidence of this impact is absent in the literature. The objective of this paper is to investigate the macro impacts of CSP. We first establish a conceptual framework on the relationship between CSP at the individual business level and sustainability at the macro level. Next, we empirically test the relationship between (averaged) CSP scores and greenhouse gas emissions at the macro level for 22 countries during 20042011. We use Granger causality tests to check for Granger causality. The estimation results show that CSP reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but the long-term effect is rather modest.

AbstractBackgroundCodes of ethics (CoE) are widely adopted in several professional areas, including that of Software Engineering. However, contemporary CoE do not pay sufficient attention to one of the most important trends to have appeared in the last years environmental issues.AimThe aim of this study is to establish a Green CoE for software engineering and Professional Practices (GreCo). Our intention is to cover a wide range of aspects related to sustainability, such as economic, environmental, social, and technical features. We are additionally interested in encouraging software engineers to adopt these aspects.MethodsThe Green CoE presented is the result of the interaction of several experts in the area. A first version of GreCo, whose starting point was a discussion at the GInSEng workshop, was created by identifying key principles and adapting them to the Green area. Next, various important CoE were reviewed so as to gather the existing references to sustainability or to detect new ones. These elements would then possibly be incorporated into the new code or stimulate the creation of new sustainable principles.ResultsThe final result is the GreCo code, which has been produced by modifying existing principles or by the introduction of new ones.

This paper serves as an introduction to this special issue on new developments in urban transportation planning. The papers in this issue highlight how physical mobility is still an essential priority for urban life, but that there are associated costs in the terms of environmental impacts, quality of life and economic performance of cities. Four features of the emerging urban transportation field are identified. The first defining feature is that it is a discipline in the midst of a paradigmatic transition. Second is its overarching aim of achieving sustainable urban mobility as part of a broader effort towards enhancing quality of life in cities. The third feature is the emphasis on collaboration, integration and exchange with other professions and policy sectors. The last distinctive feature is the recognition that urban transportation planning is a communication-oriented activity.

As a fast-growing food production industry, aquaculture is dealing with the need for intensification due to the global increasing demand for fish products. However, this also implies the use of more sustainable practices to reduce negative environmental impacts currently associated with this industry, including the use of wild resources, destruction of natural ecosystems, eutrophication of effluent receiving bodies, impacts due to inadequate medication practices, among others. Using multi-species systems, such as integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, allows to produce economically important species while reducing some of these aquaculture concerns, through biomitigation of aquaculture wastes and reduction of diseases outbreaks, for example. Applying mathematical models to these systems is crucial to control and understand the interactions between species, maximizing productivity, with important environmental and economic benefits. Here, the application of some equations and models available in the literature, regarding basic parameters, is discussed – population dynamics, growth, waste production, and filtering rate – when considering the description and optimization of a theoretical integrated multi-trophic aquaculture operation composed by three trophic levels.

Due to the high conversion rates and the low tar amounts in the product gas, entrained flow gasification of biomass can be an alternative process to state of the art gasification technologies, e.g., fluidized-bed gasifiers. Feedstock treatment is mandatory for entrained flow gasification (EFG). However, it has the potential of making residuals available for energetic use. In this study, the feasibility of EFG of solid biomass in an industrial-like test rig with a state of the art pneumatic dense-phase coal feeding system is shown. Four biomasses—torrefied wood (TW), beech wood (B), hydrothermal carbonized green waste (HCG), and corn cobs (CoC)—were used and compared to Rhenish lignite (RL). Especially, the gasification behavior of hydrothermal carbonized biomass is rarely known from the literature. The study includes a comparison of the fuels regarding feeding behavior, conversion rate, achievable gas composition, and cold gas efficiency (CGE) as well as tar formation. The oxygen stoichiometric ratio λ wa...