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The world, society and education are constantly evolving, and to respond to these changes, the main governmental institutions have been proposing different global strategies to focus efforts in the same direction. Currently, the United Nations and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have presented a series of indicators that could help to minimise the environmental, economic and social instability we are experiencing. In this sense, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been described as a fundamental factor. Specifically, in previous work, we argued that physical education (PE) could be a good tool to contribute to SDGs. Based on this, no research analysing the voices of Physical Education Teachers (PET) on how this contribution could be made has been identified in previous literature. Therefore, the objectives of this research are: (1) to analyse the voices and opinions of active PETs in terms of the knowledge they have about Sustainable Development (SD); (2) to determine their opinions about the contribution that PE could make to SDGs; and finally, (3) to identify the challenges and limitations of pedagogical action of SD in PE. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis through a semi-structured interview with 41 active PETs was carried out. The main findings will be presented and discussed around four themes: (a) agreement on the concept of sustainability; (b) PE can contribute to the achievement of SDGs; (c) ambiguity in applying SDGs to PE lessons; and (d) teachers’ constraints on how to implement SDGs in PE. It seems to indicate that PETs do not have a multidimensional vision of sustainable development. While they recognise the potential of PE to contribute to SDGs through awareness raising and student learning, they point to its pedagogical and formative constraints as the main barriers to being able to contribute. They pointed to a lack of knowledge on how to do so, guidelines on how to integrate ESD, lack of involvement, shortage of time or resources in school physical education.

Sustainability assessment and rating systems are intended to foster more sustainable design, construction, operation, maintenance and disassembly/deconstruction promoting and making possible a better integration of environment, societal, and cost concerns with other traditional decision criteria. The use of improved and building technologies can contribute considerably to better environmental cycle and then to the sustainability of the constructions. It is widely recognised in the of Building Sustainability Assessment that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a much preferable method for evaluating the environmental pressure caused by materials, Building assemblies and the whole life-cycle of a building. Nevertheless, LCA tools are not extensively used in building design and most of building sustainability assessment and systems are not comprehensive or consistently LCA-based. Reasons for this failure above all related to the huge variety and amount of material flows and processes of building’s Lifecycle and to the complexity of the stages of a LCA. This paper will present the difficulties and possible solutions to integrate more accurate environmental methods in rating systems. In this context, the paper will also present the work that is being carried out in the development of the Portuguese Building Sustainability Assessment system (SBTool PT)

Abstract This work assesses the impacts of aggressive driving behavior on pollutants emissions and energy consumption at a city level. Furthermore, it performs an economic analysis considering the potential avoided emissions and fuel savings and discusses potential policy measures to address this topic. The results showed that aggressive driving significantly impacts energy consumption and emissions, with energy consumption increasing by more than ∼200% and emissions by 330% for aggressive driving compared to non-aggressive driving (in MJ/km and in g/km, respectively). This increment was found to be even higher for diesel vehicles than for gasoline vehicles. On the contrary, gasoline vehicles showed higher percentages of increase for most emissions (CO, NOx and NO). Results also revealed that aggressive driving impacts are higher for local streets when examining the city level. Moreover, the economic analysis showed that significant cost reductions may be achieved by avoiding aggressive driving, reaching up to 52.5 k€ on a daily basis. In conclusion, this study is of particular relevance to policy makers and urban planners, enabling to obtain a comprehensive overview of the impacts of aggressive driving behaviors at a city level and providing new insights to perform further developments and to assess the feasibility of the implementation of policy measures.

Abstract Portugal’s performance concerning the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) strategy, with particular focus on perspectives for the Northern Region based on the current status of integrated municipal waste management systems in that region, was evaluated. Legal documents, official reports and the market were analyzed. The 2015 national installed capacity of waste treatment technologies, from which the high calorific value fraction (HCVF) for RDF production is obtained, is not far from what was predicted for 2013. However, only around 11% of the HCVF had such destiny and the amount of effectively produced RDF was only 30% of the material sent to RDF production (around 30 kt). In Northern Portugal, no RDF production plant was in operation in 2015; the amount of HCVF was estimated to range from 105 to 204 kt for 2015 and around 2.4 times more is expected in 2020. The strategy laydown for RDF failed so far, and thus, low diversion of waste from landfills is observed, mostly due to low landfill taxes and low HCVF quality, resulting in RDF being non-competitive with the imported higher quality product from countries with very high landfilling fees. Moreover, co-incineration and dedicated recovery solutions are scarce. In the Northern region, the HCVF may be treated in the existing municipal waste incinerator or the RDF might be recovered in new dedicated plants, receiving also non-hazardous waste fractions from other origin. Overall, to ensure a sustainable municipal waste management, the intensification of the reuse, preparation for reuse and recycling of waste components from source segregated collection must be significantly promoted.

The olive oil mill wastewater (OMW) is a by-product (with a high organic load) derived from the production of the olive oil. The OMW steam reforming (OMWSR) process was studied herein, aiming to decrease the environmental damage of such effluents; simultaneously, the waste is economically and energetically valorized with the H-2 production. Several Ni-containing catalysts were prepared and tested to compare their performances for the OMWSR using a synthetic OMW effluent; still, stability tests were also carried out. The materials were extensively characterized: thermogravimetric analysis, temperature programmed oxidation/reduction, temperature-programmed desorption of CO2/NH3, chemisorption of H-2, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry and physical adsorption-desorption of N-2 at-196 & DEG;C. Amongst the materials tested, the Ni-Ru/SiO2 sample stood out, exhibiting high catalytic performance: at 400 & DEG;C, the H-2 yield (> 8 mol(H2)& BULL;mol(OMW)(-1)) and conversion of total organic carbon (asymptotic to 75%) were high during all the 24 h of the long-term test, with only a small deactivation being noticed.

Alternative fuels and energy vectors are becoming increasingly important in terms of technical, geopolitical, economic, and environmental aspects. In particular, gaseous fuels and vectors, such as fossil or synthetic natural gas (NG) blended with hydrogen, commonly help provide optimal strategies to reduce global and toxic emissions of internal combustion engines, owing to their adaptability, anti-knock capacity, lower toxicity of pollutants, reduced CO2 emissions, and costeffectiveness. However, diesel engines still represent the reference category among internal combustion engines in terms of maximum thermodynamic efficiency. The possibility offered by dual-fuel (DF) systems to combine the efficiency and performance of diesel engines with the environmental advantages of gaseous fuels has been the subject of extensive investigations. However, the simple replacement of diesel fuel with gaseous fuel does not allow for optimising the engine performance, owing to the high percentage of unburned gaseous fuel, which compromises the potential reduction of CO2; therefore, more complex combustion strategies should be realised. In this study, with the aim of improving the DF combustion process, an experimental investigation was performed to analyse low-temperature combustion (LTC), using NG and two enriched hydrogen-compressed NG blends as primary fuels. The LTC mode was activated by means of a very early advanced pilot injection and carried out in two close steps. The double pilot injection was used to control the energy release rate in the first combustion stage, thereby minimizing the increase of the rate of pressure and allowing the extension of the operation range under LTC. The experimental activity was also focused on analysing the particle emissions, as it is well known that these emissions, together with those of nitrogen oxide, constitute the main pollutants resulting from diesel fuel combustion. The results demonstrated the potential to reduce the unburned fuel, NOx, and particle emissions simultaneously, while maintaining equivalent CO2 emissions to a diesel-only engine. Both the timing and pressure of the pilot injection proved to be critical parameters for optimising the emissions and performance

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.