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markdownabstractIn the September issue of the Dutch magazine "Kwartaalschrift Economie" an article from Meine Pieter van Dijk, Stella Pfisterer and Rob van Tulder (all from PrC) was published about flower partnerships in Africa. Unfortunately, the article is only available in Dutch.

Recent extreme weather events have resulted in an ongoing discussion on the issues of land use and compensation payments within Austrian agriculture. Building on a functional evaluation system for agricultural lands as developed within the Interreg IIIB project “ILUP”, the national project “Agriculture and Flooding” has as its goal to classify the flood-protection contribution and flood sensitivity of agricultural lands. This, in turn, enables the recommendation of targeted measures for potentially improving flood situations, as well as an estimate of their implementation costs. In addition to the digital soil map, other fundamental sources used for the project are the digital flood risk map, IACS land-use data and works by the Institute for Land and Water Management Research. Reference values and marginal returns sourced from the Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics also flow into the cost estimates for the recommended combination. The results will contribute to an understanding of the multifunctionality of agricultural lands and to the setting of priorities on a regional scale regarding packaged flood-prevention and damage-minimization. However, the results at hand can only serve as one step toward regional flood protection projects, whose development will require the cooperation of all interest groups.

The photosynthesis process generates beside carbon hydrates also complex chemical compounds. The artificial synthesis of such compounds is often impossible or may require high energy input compared with their heating value. In other words, the entropy of energy crops is low compared with that of fossil fuels. This fact is usually neglected in energy analysis of bio fuels resulting in questionable political decisions concerning renewable energy. This paper demonstrates that the energy saving and the GHG mitigation potential of fibre crops may be enhanced using them first used as raw material for commercial products before processing to fuel at the end of their lifetime. For example reed canary grass may be used for paper production and after recycling the used paper can be processed to insulation material in buildings before thermal use. Such a chain of usage trades off both, the low entropy as raw material for pulp and the heat value of the carbon hydrates. A calculation model is presented to estimate the reduction of CO2 equivalents of the following two options: Alternative A: Production of reed canary grass + processing to fuel for heating. Alternative B: Production of reed canary grass + processing to paper + recycling of paper + processing to insulation material + installation of insulation material in buildings + recycling of insulation material + processing for heating. The results show that alternative B is outclassing alternative A. Pulp made of reed canary grass for paper and insulation material saves between ten and hundred times or more energy compared with the energy yield of burning. However, fossil fuels render a higher energy return on investment and are for the time being more competitive than both options.

The work described for this deliverable was carried out by DLO-PRI, in collaboration with WU, and aim ed to understanding lipid production in Phaeodactylum tricornutum . By means of transcriptome, proteome and metabolome analyses we aimed to provide insight into the one step lipid production performed by partner WU. Cultivation conditions were chosen to steer lipid profile towards most suitable composition for biofuel production.

markdownabstractIndustrial symbiosis is a process in which firms in regional industrial systems engage in the exchange of by-products and sharing of utilities and services in order to improve their environmental and economic performance. Industrial symbiosis has a prominent social dimension. To capture the social dimension concepts from the social sciences have been introduced to the field. This thesis makes one of the first attempts to bring these together in an integrated conceptual framework. The social dimension of industrial symbiosis refers specifically to the institutional capacity of actors to coordinate their actions and interactions towards industrial symbiosis. In the thesis, the implications of the conceptual framework are tested through empirical studies, the results of which are used to present an improved framework in the conclusions. At the core of the improved framework is a two-phases model of the process through which actors build institutional capacity for industrial symbiosis. In the first phase, a common ground emerges between independent projects, that are started for disparate purposes, but are also potential building blocks for industrial symbiosis. The presence of bridging actors ensures that the emergent common ground is recognized and translated to a shared vision. With the development of the vision, the building blocks are assembled into a larger collaborative process. This triggers the second phase, in which the collaborative process unfolds as an assemblage of interrelated projects, aimed at the implementation of industrial symbiosis. The thesis also makes methodological contributions. Throughout the thesis, different methods, techniques and tools for longitudinal research are introduced as part of an innovative methodology called Event Sequence Analysis.

Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, low-cost, renewable energy sources; they will also need efficient price signals that motivate sustainable energy consumption as well as a better real-time alignment of energy demand and supply.

It is well known that building installations for indoor climate control, consume a substantial part of the total energy consumption and that at present these installations use much more energy than required due to inadequate settings and poor control and management strategies. European building energy management is diffuse since design, manufacture, engineering, installation, commissioning and maintenance processes are involved contemporary and the wide variety of climates, building types, spaces, control and management methods and national regulations. Addressing the complexity of optimisation, integration and self adaptation through smart building control systems potentially save substantial quantities of energy while improving the present standards for indoor comfort. The EDIFICIO project aims at developing an innovative, adaptive, integrated control systems for optimal energy management and indoor comfort in buildings based on the utilisation of Soft Computing Techniques (SCT), specially Fuzzy Logic (FL), Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Genetic Algorithms (GAs). The EDIFICO project is partly funded by the European Commission DGXII within the frame of the JOULE III Programme