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Abstract This work focuses on the efforts being made by King County, Washington to respond to the challenges of global climate change, concentrating on both mitigation and adaptation. King County is a leader in the United States in the development and implementation of meaningful climate change efforts in local government. The county, in conjunction with ICLEI, recently produced a workbook on Preparing for Climate Change at the Local, Regional, and State levels. While the vast majority of local governments in the United States have only taken limited steps to respond to global warming, King County stands out as aggressively looking to move in a new direction. The King County Climate Plan is based on the conviction that climate change is both a problem and an opportunity for communities to improve environmental quality through mitigation of greenhouse gases and simultaneously build resilience to adapt to global climate change. Its exceptional combination of responsibilities in planning and opportunities makes this an invaluable experience to other local governments throughout the world. The work to be presented is a case study that examines the underlying issues and challenges faced by this jurisdiction in adopting its climate change plan; the development and adoption of the plan; issues associated with monitoring and sustaining these efforts; and the broader challenges of building more resilient and adaptive communities. The case study will focus both on procedural issues, as well as, on the types of mitigation and adaptive responses. One aspect of the paper will examine King County's efforts to link climate change efforts/policy/plans to other critical community concerns (e.g., issues of equity and race), and to the economic opportunities that have become critical motivators to successfully as moving forward the county attempts to establish itself as a global leader in meeting the challenges of global climate change.

Abstract As part of a comprehensive evaluation of the use of Sida hermaphrodita (hereafter referred to as Sida) biomass as a solid biofuel, a life cycle assessment (LCA) according to ISO 14040/14044 was carried out by means of a suitable cradle-to-gate system design. The supply and use of chips, pellets and briquettes was studied by internal and external comparisons to show competitiveness and improvement options. The results show fewer differences within the Sida process chain designs but larger distinctions to compared alternative biofuels such as wood or Miscanthus pellets. A major finding is that Sida process chains cause lower environmental impacts in comparison with alternative biofuels. The study identified hot spots within the Sida process chains and starting points for further improvement. A sensitivity analysis of important parameters, such as specific yield or heating values was performed. Because there are no similar investigations on the environmental impact of Sida used as a biogenic solid fuel to date this manuscript presents first results. So far, the results indicate that Sida provides a more sustainable option for the use of biomass in combustion processes in relation to environmental impacts.

Commercial bakery products in the United States such as breads, rolls, frozen cakes, pies, pastries, cookies, and crackers consume over $870 million of energy annually. Energy efficiency measures can reduce the energy costs of significant energy processes and increase earnings predictability. This article summarizes key energy efficiency measures relevant to industrial baking. Case study data from bakeries and related facilities worldwide are used to identify savings and cost metrics associated with efficiency measures. While the focus of this paper is on U.S. bakeries, findings can be generalized to bakeries internationally. A discussion of energy management systems is provided and how energy efficiency measures savings can be sustained. Energy and plant managers at bakeries can use this information to cost-effectively reduce energy consumption while utilities and policy makers can apply the findings to energy efficiency program design.

AbstractWith growing demand for internationally traded biomass, the logistic operations required to economically move biomass from the field or forest to end‐ users have become increasingly complex. To design cost effective and sustainable feedstock supply chains, it is important to understand the economics, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, their interdependencies, and the related uncertainties of the logistic process operations of international supply chains. This paper presents an approach to assessing lignocellulosic feedstock supply systems at the operational level. For this purpose, the Biomass Logistic Model (BLM) has been linked with the Geographic Information Systems‐based Biomass Intermodal Transportation Model (BIT‐UU) and extended with inter‐continental transport routes. Case studies of herbaceous and woody biomass, produced in the US Midwest and US Southeast, respectively, and shipped to Europe for conversion to Fischer‐Tropsch (FT) diesel are included to demonstrate how intermodal transportation and, in particular, overseas shipping integrates with the bioenergy supply chains. For the cases demonstrated, biomass can be supplied at 99 € Mg−1 to 117 € Mg−1 (dry) and converted to FT diesel at 19 € GJ−1 to 24 € GJ−1 depending on the feedstock type and location, intermediate (chips or pellets) and size of the FT diesel production plant. With the flexibility to change the design of supply chains as well as input variables, many alternative supply chain cases can be assessed. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

This study focuses on the economic feasibility for large-scale biomass production from soybeans or switchgrass from a region in Argentina. This is determined, firstly, by estimating whether the potential supply of biomass, when food and feed demand are met, is sufficient under different scenarios to 2030. On a national level, switchgrass has a biomass potential of 99 × 106 (1.9 EJ) to 243 × 106 tdm (4.5 EJ)/year depending on the scenario. Soybean (crude vegetable oil content) production for bioenergy has a potential of 7.1 × 106 (0.25 EJ) to 13.8 × 106 tdm (0.5 EJ)/year depending on the scenario. The most suitable region (La Pampa province) to cultivate energy crop production is selected based on a defined set of criteria (available land for biomass production, available potential for both crops, proximity of logistics and limited risk of land use competition). The available potential for bioenergy in La Pampa ranges from 1.2 × 105 to 1.8 × 105 tdm/year for soybean production (based on vegetable oil content) and from 6.3 × 106 to 18.2 × 106 tdm/year for switchgrass production, depending on the scenario. Bioenergy chains for large-scale biomass production for export or for local use are further defined to analyse the economic performance. In this study, switchgrass is converted to pellets for power generation in the Netherlands or for local heating in Argentina. Soybeans are used for biodiesel production for export or for local use. Switchgrass cultivation costs range from 33–91 US$/tdm (1€ = 1.47 US$ based on 19 February 2008). Pellet production costs are 58–143 US$/tdm for local use and 150–296 US$/tdm until delivery at the harbour of Rotterdam. Total conversion costs for electricity in the Netherlands from switchgrass pellets range from 0.06–0.08 US$/kWh. Heating costs in Argentina from switchgrass pellets range from 0.02–0.04 US$/kWh. Soybean cultivation costs range from 182–501 US$/tdm depending on the scenario. Biodiesel production costs are 0.3–1.2 US$/l for local use and 0.5–1.7 US$/l after export to the Netherlands. Key parameters for the economic performance of the bioenergy chains in La Pampa province are transport costs, cultivation costs, pre-processing and conversion costs and costs for fossil fuels and agricultural commodities.

Worldwide, marginalized and low-income communities will disproportionately suffer climate change impacts while also retaining the least political power to mitigate their consequences. To adapt to environmental shocks, communities must balance intensifying natural resource consumption with the need to ensure the sustainability of ecosystem provisioning services. Thus, scientists have long been providing policy recommendations that seek to balance humanitarian needs with the best outcomes for the conservation of ecosystems and wildlife. However, many conservation and development practitioners from biological backgrounds receive minimal training in either social research methods or participatory project design. Without a clear understanding of the sociocultural factors shaping decision-making, their initiatives may fail to meet their goals, even when communities support proposed initiatives. This paper explores the underlying assumptions of a community's agency, or its ability to develop and enact preferred resilience-enhancing adaptations. We present a context-adaptable toolkit to assess community agency, identify barriers to adaptation, and survey perceptions of behaviour change around natural resource conservation and alternative food acquisition strategies. This tool draws on public health and ecology methods to facilitate conversations between community members, practitioners and scientists. We then provide insights from the toolkit's collaborative development and pilot testing with Vezo fishing communities in southwestern Madagascar.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture’.

The aim of this study is to investigate the role of information and communication technol ogy (ICT) and human capital development on environmental degradation (CO2) using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework in line with the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP21). Five South Asian countries namely: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were considered in the context of the present study between the annual time period of 1990 to 2016. Pedroni cointegration test and Kao’s residual coin tegration test are used to assess long term relationship while Dumitrescu and Harlin (Econ Model 29:1450–1460, 2012) is used to test causality relationship between the variables. Empirical fndings from the study showed signifcant efects of ICT import, renewable energy usage and human development decrease CO2 levels while ICT export and urbaniza tion increase carbon emission levels in the long run. Furthermore, a signifcantly positive association is observed between economic growth and CO2 emission while the square of national income exerts a signifcantly negative efect on environmental degradation, which supports the EKC for the South Asian states. From a practical implication context, policy makers should not only concentrate on their economic growth trajectory improvement but also enhance the improvement of their ICT infrastructure, invest more in renewable energy sources, follow policies that would help the countries to raise human development stand ards, as well as consciousness for environmental sustainability should be pursued

The process of urbanization has been shown to be important for economic development, environmental impacts and human wellbeing, particularly in developing countries. In this paper we compare structure, data sources and scenario results of four integrated assessment models that are capable of analyzing different aspects of urbanization. The comparison focuses on residential sector energy use and related CO2 emissions based on a set of urbanization scenarios for China and India. Important insights from this model comparison include that (i) total fossil fuel and industrial CO2 emissions at the regional level are not very sensitive to alternative rates of urbanization and are largely dependent on the linkage between urbanization and economic growth via differentiated labor productivity in urban and rural areas, (ii) alternative urbanization pathways may yield different results for the share of solid fuels in residential energy use, thereby affecting the number of people relying on these fuels and the associated adverse health impacts, and (iii) alternative economic growth scenarios can only be assessed for their welfare implications if urban and rural household are distinguished, even though that distinction does not always strongly affect aggregate outcomes which is often due to two effects that compensate each other in total. It can be concluded that urbanization and heterogeneity of households and consumers are clearly relevant for distributional effects and associated health and social impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.