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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)

The use of the mean-variance approach (MVA) is well demonstrated in the financial literature for the optimal design of financial assets portfolios. The electricity sector portfolios are also guided by similar objectives, namely maximizing return and minimizing risk. Based on this assumption, this paper proposes a possible MVA for the definition of optimal electricity portfolios relying on renewable energy sources (RES). The model was applied for the Portuguese case and the results demonstrated that the less risky solutions are characterised by a mix of RES technologies. Though recognising the usefulness of the proposed MVA, this case also evidence the need to further proceed with a modified approach recognizing the technical constraints and specificities of the electricity sector.

In referring to the fashion system or business, we can address to a wide variety of approaches. On an economical and business analysis, fashion can be defined as a cycle that allows to some mature industries, such as clothing, footwear or even cars, to be dynamic and maintain certain profitability over the time. While our attention tends to focus solely on the finished products, we must understand that these are the result of a long chain of stages, activities and technologies whose interaction is largely responsible for the product’s success on the market. Sustainability arises as a main vector of differentiation for fashion brands in today’s world context. In a fast moving industry such as fashion, sustainability is a concept for designers to explore, breaking the grounds for the environmental impact of the production supply, considerations of end uses or the lifecycle of the product. One of the challenges that we can present to fashion brands nowadays is to deliver a blend of both sustainability and elegance in fashion. In an era dominated by economic and financial crises, how can fashion brands coop with this new reality and enhance their differentiation vectors in order to succeed? This paper intends to explore the sustainable business model and strategy for fashion brands towards a more responsible branding, facing the challenges that the new world places upon them. Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

The building sector is one of the Europeâ s main energy consumer, making buildings an important target for a wiser energy use, improving indoor comfort conditions and reducing the energy consumption. To achieve the European Union targets for energy consumption and carbon reductions it is crucial to act in new, but also in existing buildings, which constitute the majority of the building stock. In existing buildings, the significant improvement of their efficiency requires important investments. Therefore, costs are a major concern in the decision making process and the analysis of the cost effectiveness of the interventions is an important path in the guidance for the selection of the different renovation scenarios. The Portuguese thermal legislation considers the simple payback method for the calculations of the time for the return of the investment. However, this method does not take into consideration inflation, cash flows and cost of capital, as well as the future costs of energy and the building elements lifetime as it happens in a life cycle cost analysis. In order to understand the impact of the economic analysis method used in the choice of the renovation measures, a case study has been analysed using simple payback calculations and life cycle costs analysis. Overall results show that less far-reaching renovation measures are indicated when using the simple payback calculations which may be leading to solutions less cost-effective in a long run perspective.

The energy efficiency of buildings is nowadays one of the main concerns of the construction market. But, Indoor Environmental Quality of Buildings (IEQ) should not be disregarded. To achieve an adequate quality of buildings it is necessary to consider a set of aspects that are interconnected and influence each other, not always in a favourable way. The selection of the most suitable construction solution and materials for the building elements must consider its contribution for the IEQ (thermal and acoustic comfort, daylight conditions and the indoor air quality) inside the buildings, its energy efficiency and its environmental impact (considering the embodied energy, for example), but also the weight of the solution and its effect on the structural project of the building. The solutions adopted in buildings, usually, only optimize no more than one of the necessary comfort requirements. In many cases, the best solutions to accomplish different comfort requirements are not compatible, especially in what concerns natural ventilation and lighting strategies and the acoustic and thermal performance. So, it is necessary to have an integrated approach to ensure the best overall behaviour taking into account all of the, sometimes incompatible, comfort and energy efficiency requirements. In this work the use of a multi-criteria analysis, to balance all these aspects on the design phase, in order to assist the designer in the selection of construction solutions and materials will be presented. The selection of the most adequate construction solutions will increase the buildings IEQ, energy performance and also its environmental impact.

Recently, environmental architecture and sustainable construction has been ranked on top of the worldâ s interests. Making use of natural resources helps in reducing energy consumption and costs associated with the operation of buildings. The current architectural approaches and designs in Palestine are far away from environmental concepts, copying and simulating abroad approaches, without taking into account the culture, climate, and inhabitant's needs. On the contrast, vernacular architecture has achieved environmental concepts and has given suitable approaches and samples - without any need to simulate or copy - which come from people and land. This paper discusses how the Palestinian socio-cultural context shaped the residential vernacular architecture in Palestine, taking the old city of Nablus as a case-study. The research concept depends on analysing and trying to understand the effect of the socio-cultural context on vernacular architecture and trying to reach some rules or understandings of how it works in order to reach a modern environmental dwelling that is suitable to this concept. The research method goes through analysing study cases from the traditional architecture models and the Nablus city is selected as a case study. This analytical and qualitative method can lead to deep understanding for how to benefit from vernacular architecture in Palestine in finding the future environmental residential construction. One of the main findings of this research is to set general and special rules for building sustainable buildings in Palestine from the socio-cultural point view, in order to be a reference for designers, stakeholders, ministry of planning, and municipalities.

Most of the existing buildings have high resources consumption and low indoor environmental quality, leading to the unsustainability of the built environment. Being aware of this reality and based in the European goal to achieve Nearly-Zero Energy consumption standard in buildings, it is urgent to define guidelines that could support the sustainable refurbishment design since the earlier stages. This paper intends to illustrate the process of sustainable building refurbishment, supported by different guidelines applied to a case study. To achieve this goal the definition and evaluation of a group of procedures to be implemented, and a cost-benefit analysis applied to a case study was performed, having as final goal its sustainability optimization.

The development of new technologies for renewable energy production is crucial for decreasing the reliance in fossil fuels and improving global sustainability. Waste materials are valuable resources that can be used for the production of energy carriers. Organic wastes can be anaerobically digested to ultimately produce methane. Hydrogen can be recovered from this process, if methanogenesis is inhibited. These energy carriers can also be derived from recalcitrant materials in a two step-process combining waste gasification and subsequent syngas bioconversion. Research carried out at our group focuses on the study of anaerobic processes for the production of energy-carriers using a multidisciplinary approach that combines both microbiological and technological aspects. Important achievements have been made within the anaerobic digestion of lipid-rich wastes. From our research, it became clear that lipids and LCFA-rich wastewater anaerobic treatment can be feasible with efficient methane recovery. Additionally, wastes containing fats and proteins, such as wastes from poultry industry, slaughterhouse and meat-processing industry have been assessed for methane production. Hydrolysis of cellulolytic and proteinaceous materials in solid wastes was enhanced using physicochemical pre-treatments and bioaugmentation, which is auspicious for optimal methane production. Sugar-rich wastes were used for assessing biohydrogen production and allowed the identification of critical aspects for methanogenesis inhibition. Immobilization of hydrogen-producing microorganisms in high rate continuous reactors was performed with good hydrogen recovery. Currently, we are studying the utilization of latex bionanocoatings for the entrapment of hydrogen-producing microorganisms as a means to improve cell immobilization. Another research area of expansion in our group is syngas fermentation to methane. Studies have been conducted on gas-liquid mass transfer for evaluating the potential of bioprocesses for syngas conversion. Concurrently, the physiology and microbiology of syngas-converting mixed cultures is also being assessed.

The exponential growth of tra c demand, and supporting network infrastructures, is leading to serious energy consumption issues. With proper routing, some network links can be put on a sleep mode if demands can be routed through other links and, with multiperiod tra c, the sleeping links can change between periods. In this paper, we address the energy e cient routing problem, and we study the tradeo between energy savings and percentage of routing paths allowed to change between periods. We present an ILP model de ning the energy e cient routing problem and we propose a GRASP based heuristic to compute good routing solutions.