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Ecology and Economy: "Emergy" Analysis and Public Policy in Texas
... H.T. Odum (1987) defined emergy as the amount of another type of energy contained in flowing or stored energy [28]. He further explained that the emergy value is the total amount of available energy directly or indirectly placed into the application of the product or labor service formation process [29]. ...
... H.T. Odum (1987) defined emergy as the amount of another type of energy contained in flowing or stored energy [28]. He further explained that the emergy value is the total amount of available energy directly or indirectly placed into the application of the product or labor service formation process [29]. ...
With the rapid development of China’s new energy industry, the use of lithium-ion batteries has increased sharply, and the demand for battery cathode metals such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese has also increased rapidly. Scrapped ceramic saggars that are used to produce the cathode materials of lithium-ion batteries contain large amounts of nickel, cobalt, and manganese compounds; thus, recycling these saggars has high economic value and ecological significance. In this paper, the emergy method is used to analyze the ecological benefits of the typical Ni–Co-containing saggar recycling process in China. This paper constructs an ecoefficiency evaluation index for industrial systems based on emergy analysis to analyze the recycling of nickel and cobalt saggars. The ecological benefits are analyzed, and the following conclusions are drawn. (1) The Ni–Co-containing saggar recycling production line has good economic and ecological benefits. (2) The process has room for improvement in the energy use efficiency and clean energy use of the crystallization process and the efficiency of chemical use in the cascade separation and purification process. This study also establishes a set of emergy analysis methods and indicator system for the evaluation of the ecological benefit of the recycling industry, which can provide a reference for the evaluation of the eco-economic benefit of similar recycling industry processes.
... Many empirical cases were carried out for assessing resource consumption, overall economic outputs and social benefits by emergy analysis. This method has been successfully applied at the national level [23,24], at the regional level including provinces [25,26], and cities [6,27,28], and at the industrial park level [29,30]. For instance, Wei Chen et al. ...
... However, at the regional level, in recent years, many scholars have selected some cities as research subjects, to probe deeply into the sustainability regarding resource flows, which are organized and measured to depict the development structure of a city. Some are focused on the metropolitan cities like Beijing, Texas, Rome and Italy [6,24,31,32]; there are some researchers who concentrate on the specific types of cities, such as Suzhou, an export-oriented city in Eastern China [33], and Shenyang, an industrial city in the northeast of China [25]. Moreover, there are also studies on other patterns of cities , such as the research on urban comprehensive performance linking impacts to sustainability evaluation of Chongqing [34], the research on sustainable trends from 1960 to 2013 in an agriculture-based region of Puerto Rico [35], the research on the spatial disparity between built-up urban sprawl region and urban footprint regions of Xiamen [36], and discussions of sustainability on eco-economic system of Chengdu [37] and each of municipality in the province of Siena [38]. ...
As the natural resources are getting exhausted, the concept of sustainable development of regions has received increasing attention, especially for resource-dependent cities. In this paper, an innovative method based on emergy analysis and the Human Impact Population Affluence Technology (IPAT) model is developed to analyze the quantitative relationship of economic growth, energy consumption and its overall sustainability level. Taiyuan, a traditional, resource-dependent city in China, is selected as the case study region. The main results show that the total emergy of Taiyuan increased from 9.023 × 10²³ sej in 2007 to 9.116 × 10²³ sej in 2014, with a 38% decline in non-renewable emergy and an increase of imported emergy up to 125%. The regional emergy money ratio (EMB) was reduced by 48% from 5.31 × 10¹³ sej/$ in 2007 to 2.74 × 10¹³ sej/$ in 2014, indicating that the increasing speed of consuming resources and energy was faster than the increase of GDP, and that Taiyuan's money purchasing power declined. The lower emergy sustainability index (ESI) indicates that Taiyuan was explored and produced large quantities of mineral resources, which puts more stress on the environment as a consequence, and that this is not sustainable in the long run. The IPAT analysis demonstrates that Taiyuan sticks to the efforts of energy conservation and environmental protection. In order to promote regional sustainable development, it is necessary to have an integrated effort. Policy insights suggest that resourceful regions should improve energy and resource efficiency, optimize energy and resourceful structure and carry out extensive public participation.
... In addition, natural resources are indirectly used up through the consumption of imported, manmade goods and services. For instance, freshwater can be used up directly in a water treatment plant (Odum et al., 1987b;Buenfil, 2001;Pulselli et al., 2011;Rugani et al., 2011;Arbault et al., 2013b) or in various activities over a territory (e.g. Odum et al., 1987aOdum et al., , 1987bOdum et al., , 1998Brown and McClanahan, 1996;Kang and Park, 2002;Campbell et al., 2005;Pulselli et al., 2008;Campbell and Ohrt, 2009;Chen and Chen, 2009;Chen et al., 2009b;Giannetti et al., 2013), but activities and territories may also import electricity and food, which indirectly require freshwater in their production lifecycle. ...
... For instance, freshwater can be used up directly in a water treatment plant (Odum et al., 1987b;Buenfil, 2001;Pulselli et al., 2011;Rugani et al., 2011;Arbault et al., 2013b) or in various activities over a territory (e.g. Odum et al., 1987aOdum et al., , 1987bOdum et al., , 1998Brown and McClanahan, 1996;Kang and Park, 2002;Campbell et al., 2005;Pulselli et al., 2008;Campbell and Ohrt, 2009;Chen and Chen, 2009;Chen et al., 2009b;Giannetti et al., 2013), but activities and territories may also import electricity and food, which indirectly require freshwater in their production lifecycle. As a consequence, almost all natural processes and human activities need, directly and indirectly, freshwater. ...
... The production side approach measures energy quality by the cost of producing a fuel or by the cost of converting it from one form to another. The most notable of these techniques is emergy (with an " m " > analysis as developed by Odum and his colleagues (Odum and Odum, 1983; Odum et al., 1987; Odum, 1988; Huang and Odum, 1991). Emergy analysis is a pure cost-of production approach that measures the quality of a particular type of energy by its transformity. ...
... The basis for the calculation of the transformities is the thermal efficiency of a wood-fired power plant in Brazil, but the efficiency of power plants vary throughout the world (Smil, 1991) as do all the other energy conversion technologies used in the emergy calculations. Similarly, energy/output data from the New Zealand economy are mixed with the Brazil power plant data to calculate the transformities , which are then applied to many other economies throughout the world (Odum and Odum, 1983; Odum et al., 1987; Odum and Arding, 1990; Huang and Odum, 1991). Third, the values of the transformities are highly sensitive to technological assumptions made by Odum and Odum (1983). ...
The goal of net energy analysis is to assess the amount of useful energy delivered by an
energy system, net of the energy costs of delivery. The standard technique of aggregating
energy inputs and outputs by their thermal equivalents diminishes the ability of energy
analysis to achieve that goal because different types of energy have different abilities to do
work per heat equivalent. This paper describes physical and economic methods of calculating
energy quality, and incorporates economic estimates of quality in the analysis of the
energy return on investment (EROI) for the extraction of coal and petroleum resources in
the U.S. from 1954 to 1987. EROI is the ratio of energy delivered to energy used in the
delivery process. The quality-adjusted EROI is used to answer the following questions: (1)
are coal and petroleum resources becoming more scarce in the U.S.?, (2) is society’s
capability of doing useful economic work changing?, and (3) is society’s allocation of energy
between the extraction of coal and petroleum optimal? The results indicate that petroleum
and coal became more scarce in the 1970s although the degree of scarcity depends on the
type of quality factor used. The quality-adjusted EROI shed light on the coal-petroleum
paradox: when energy inputs and outputs are measured in thermal equivalents, coal
extraction has a much larger EROI than petroleum. The adjustment for energy quality
reduces substantially the difference between the two fuels. The results also suggest that
when corrections are made for energy quality, society’s allocation of energy between coal
and petroleum extraction meets the efficiency criteria described by neoclassical and biophysical
economists.
... The EE is one of the most used thermodynamics-based approaches to study human activity in territorial systems (Odum et al. 1987; Pulselli et al. 2008a; Brown et al. 2009Odum 1971Odum , 1996 ), emergy is the quantity of solar energy joules (seJ), directly or indirectly used to obtain a flow or a product. An emergy assessment accounts for the energy transformations that have historically taken place to produce a product or service. ...
... This includes moving back through a hierarchy of transformation processes from a final grade of energy or matter to the primary source of all the process in the biosphere, i.e., solar energy (Odum 1988). The EE helps us to understand the actual environmental cost of the use of resources, measured in terms of the effort of Nature to provide them for human use, and what kind of mechanisms and biogeochemical drivers are at work for the production of the renewable and non-renewable resources (Odum et al. 1987; Odum 1991; Brown and Ulgiati 1997; Odum and Odum 2000; Pulselli et al. 2011; Coscieme et al. 2013). This suggests that the EE of a territorial system provides a systemic and holistic picture of the territory from a sustainability point of view (Pulselli et al. 2004Pulselli et al. , 2008b Bastianoni et al. 2005). ...
Night-time satellite imagery enables the measurement, visualization, and mapping of energy consumption in an area. In this paper, an index of the "sum of lights" as observed by night-time satellite imagery within national boundaries is compared with the emergy of the nations. Emergy is a measure of the solar energy equivalent used, directly or indirectly, to support the processes that characterize the economic activity in a country. Emergy has renewable and non-renewable components. Our results show that the non-renewable component of national emergy use is positively correlated with night-time satellite imagery. This relationship can be used to produce emergy density maps which enable the incorporation of spatially explicit representations of emergy in geographic information systems. The region of Abruzzo (Italy) is used to demonstrate this relationship as a spatially disaggregate case.
... In the first case we have a system with two independent external sources (indicated with S and F) and three components (A, B and E). In the second case, when the system is considered inside the larger system, we can see that S and F are not entirely independent because the flow F is also the result of flows deriving from S. There are many past studies concerning emergy evaluations at different levels of organization but often the level under study is considered as a single system (Pulselli, 2010; Campbell and Ohrt, 2009; Pulselli et al., 2008; Campbell et al., 2005; Ulgiati et al., 1994) and only in some of them (Odum et al., 1987Odum et al., , 1998 Odum and Arding, 1991 ) is the relationship with the larger system that contains it explicitly considered. In this work we propose a method to perform a complete emergy evaluation for hierarchically nested system. ...
... In both cases, we can show that the total emergy flow (Em), received or absorbed, is given by the union of the sets of inputs regardless of whether we consider them as received or absorbed (Fig. 2). 1 Note that a flow of emergy is always associated with an underlying flow of available energy, matter or information, upon which it depends. Following Bastianoni et al. (2011), we can represent a category of flows with a set, so we have: R = {emergy flow of renewable sources} N = {emergy flow of local non-renewable sources} F = {emergy flow of imported goods and services} U = {total emergy flow used in (i.e., absorbed by) the system} ¯ U = {total emergy flow received by the system} Let us note that the total emergy used can also be considered in terms of concentrated use (C use ) and dispersed use (D use ) of resources (Odum et al., 1987 ). Sometimes, in fact, it is useful to distinguish between the emergy that is supplied to a territorial system in a concentrated form and that which is supplied in a dispersed form. ...
The language of set theory has been recently used to describe the emergy evaluation of a process. In this paper this mathematical language is used as a guide to evaluate the emergy of nested systems. We analyze a territorial system on multiple scales as an example of hierarchically nested systems. In this regard, we consider two levels of organization of a territorial system with particular attention to defining the relationships between the flows at each level and between the levels. Our method is designed to make quantifying the interactions among levels easier and more accurate.
... These elements have different natures and are incomparable in the form of unified solar emergy, solar emergy (sej) is served as a unified unit of measurement. Thus, emergy analysis theory is used to objectively evaluate and compare the contributions made to the human economic system by various natural resources and to evaluate the sustainable development capacity of all kinds of ecological systems based on it [10,11]. ...
Based on the Wassily W. Leontief input–output model, this paper constructs an emergy input–output model of an agricultural eco-economic system based on emergy theory. This model overcomes three limitations of the traditional input–output model. First, the conversion rate of ecological energy is used to solve the problem posed by the fact that the material input–output table cannot be directly combined due to the different measurement units of different substances. Second, it transforms the research object from a pure economic system to an eco-economic system by adding resources and environmental factors. Third, this paper solves the problem posed by the fact that the value input–output model is greatly affected by inflation, and uses the model to analyze the input–output of Zoumajie town in Shuangfeng City, Hunan Province, China, by unifying dimension (solar energy value).
... The emergy analysis method is chosen to quantify the benefits of water resources in this paper. Emergy is a metric created by the American ecologist Odum [23,24], which uses solar energy as a standard to convert different substances and energy into the solar energy that forms it. The emergy method can convert the water resources benefits of various industries into the same dimension for analysis, making the distribution results more real and reliable. ...
Water rights trading is an important way to solve the problem of water shortage by market mechanism. The allocation of water rights among ecological water, energy water, and grain planting water are the basis of the regional water rights trade. In this paper, the concept of coordinated development of water–ecology–energy–food is proposed. We build a water rights allocation model with fairness, efficiency, and coordinated development as the goal, to achieve water security for various industries. Taking Yinchuan city as an example, the results showed that compared with the current water rights the water rights of life increased by 1.07%, the water rights of ecology increased by 1.85%, the water rights of energy industry decreased by 1.09%, the water rights of food planting decreased by 3.27%, the water rights of other agriculture increased by 0.83%, and the water rights of the general industry increased by 0.65%. After the allocation of water rights, the cooperativity of water–ecology–energy–food increased by 7.56%, and the total value of water resources in various industries increased by 2.31 × 108 CNY. A new water rights allocation model is developed in this paper, which can provide a reference for the allocation of water rights among regional industries.
... For instance, the ecological footprint model can guide the rational allocation of resources by using the supply-demand relationship between human demand and ecological resources (Solarin et al., 2019;Liu et al., 2021). The emergy analysis can use solar energy value as a unified measure for economic, resources and environmental factors of the RECC system (Odum et al., 1987). Virtual water quantitatively calculates water resources embedded in products or services for final consumption by integrating the use and pollution of water resources in the full production processes, which is analogic to the principles of ecological footprint analysis (Chen et al., 2017;Liao et al., 2018). ...
Resources and environment carrying capacity (RECC) is an important concept for regional and urban sustainable development. This study constructs a comprehensive RECC indicator and a system dynamics (SD) model to simulate its historical conditions and future scenarios, stressing the nexus between the socio-economic and eco-environmental factors. This methodology is applied to Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration (BTH) for the period of 2000–2030. The results show that, in the business-as-usual scenario, BTH’s RECC will present an “S” curve and increase from 100.26 million in 2000 to 129.65 million in 2030. Although it is greatly improved, the risk of population overload will increase, especially in Beijing, Baoding and Langfang city. Moreover, water resources carrying capacity will be the key constraining factor of RECC for BTH and its most cities. Compared with the economic-oriented and ecological-oriented development mode, to maintain the “business-as-usual” development mode is recommended for the whole BTH. However, the south-central cities should take the ecological-oriented development mode to overcome population overload. This research presents a framework to assess RECC under different scenarios for urban agglomeration. The results might provide an important guidance for sustainable urban planning and coupled human-environment system analysis.
... Emergy evaluations determine value based on a specifi c system's spatial boundaries and the values of products and services are constrained by the emergy of total resource fl ows that enter the system from outside and by the internal emergy fl ows derived from the natural capital storages within the system. Odum et al. [22] provided the fi rst comparison of economic market value and emergy value of environmental resources by analyzing the water supply system of Texas (Em$ values were obtained by dividing measured emergy fl ows in rain, groundwater, etc. by the EMR of the United States in 1985, 2.2E+12 semj/$). They found that environmental products like the rain (Em$ 0.035 m −3 ), rivers (Em$ 0.09 m −3 ), and ground water (Em$ 0.25 m −3 ) on the Texas plains represented quantifi able values using emergy, but water fl ows were not valued by markets until they were extracted for human use. ...
... Source: (a)Brown et al., 2016; Campbell et al., 2005; (c)Pulselli et al., 2008;(d) Odum et al., 1987. ...
Urbanization not only causes environmental changes in metropolitan regions but also influences the ecological and socioeconomic changes of distant land areas due to increasing demands on resource use and waste emissions. Previous studies on the assessment of urban systems have focused on the city or metropolitan areas under study. There is a need to incorporate urban land teleconnections to investigate the relationship between a city and distant land areas during the process of urbanization. This paper analyzes the teleconnection of the energy and material flows associated with Taipei's peri-urbanization and remote areas in Taiwan. The cross-scale emergy synthesis of Taipei and Taiwan was examined first to investigate the relationships of the material and energy flows between Taipei and Taiwan. The exploitation of non-renewable resources in Taiwan during the 1990s was driven mainly by the construction and development taking place in Taipei. Furthermore, compared with Taiwan, the Taipei area relies heavily on external resources. The results of the emergy evaluation of materials flows in Taipei indicated that 85% of the construction materials used were imported from other remote areas during the past 30 years. The use of construction materials in Taipei had a higher intensity in the city center during 1982-1992 and in the peri-urban area during 2002−2014. The results of the emergy synthesis indicated that urban land teleconnections exist between peri-urban areas of Taipei and other distant areas in Taiwan.
... Emergy analysis table. Sources:Odum et al. (1987) andHuang and Odum (1991) ...
The traditional Hakka spirit of Taiwan gives the impression of a frugal people who believe in the virtue of hard work, in their relationship with the land and in environmental stewardship. This study contrasts the ecological economic systems of Hakka and non-Hakka villages in the Lui–Tui area in southern Taiwan, and the features of and changes in the development of diverse Hakka villages in the area from the view of ecological economics through emergy analysis methods. The study found that from the 1920s to the 2010s, there were significant differences in environmental sustainability between Hakka and non-Hakka villages in the Lui–Tui area. Hakkas knew how to make good use of environmental resources and properly allocate external economic resources. There were few differences among the Hakka villages, in particular the right militia, former militia and rear militia. Over half a century, Hakkas in the Lui–Tui area used their resources more efficiently. In terms of energy usage density, there was no significant difference between Hakka and non-Hakka villages in the 1920s; however, in the 1970s non-Hakka villages had greater density than Hakka villages.
... Emergy analysis method developed by Odum (1987) is an analytic approach for ecosystem. This method can not only assess all kinds of materials and energies of ecosystem on the same standards to carry out quantitative analysis but also provide the basis for quantitative study of input and output for national or regional ecosystem (Campbell et al. 2005;Pulselli et al. 2006;Campbell and Lu 2009;Rugani et al. 2011;Su et al. 2011;Zhu et al. 2012;Hossaini and Hewage 2013;Giannetti et al. 2013;Coscieme et al. 2014), various subsystems and specific production systems (Brown and McClanahan 1996;Odum 1996;Kang and Park 2002;Gasparatos 2011), assessment of natural resources utilization (Chen et al. 2006;Zhu et al. 2009;Lv and Ling 2010;Lu et al. 2012), economic policymaking (Odum 1996), coordination of international trade relationships (Yu and Wang 2010;Lu and Zhao 2013) and so on (Lan et al. 2002). ...
The multi-functionality of paddy farming has become a hot issue recently. Paddy farming provides numerous ecosystem services that are crucial to human well-being. However, evaluation of the contribution of paddy farming to human well-being usually focus on its economic value, while its non-market services are usually ignored. Only evaluating the market profits or market relative benefits cannot reflect comprehensively the contribution of paddy farming to people's well-being. This will affect people's choices for or against paddy farming activities and people's opt for invest or not invest in it. A comprehensive evaluation of paddy farming can provide an important reference for the government and society to conserve the multi-functionality of paddy farming and achieve sustainable development. To this end, this paper reports a case evaluation of paddy farming in Hunan, the largest rice producing as well as rice yield province in China, and uses emergy theory to make a comprehensive evaluation for paddy farming. The emergy evaluation results of the paddy ecosystem in Hunan are as follows: in 2010, the input emergy of the paddy ecosystem in Hunan is 2.51E+22 sej and the output emergy is 6.31E+22 sej. For the input emergy, the part from natural resources is 1.96E+21 sej and the part from human society is 2.32E+22 sej; for the output emergy, the part from products is 2.22E+22 sej, the part from impositive externality is 4.16E+22 sej and the part from negative externality is −7.41E+20 sej. Taking the non-market outputs into consideration, the gains from the human economic society's 1 $ input in paddy farming, emergy sustainability index (ESI) and emergy profit rate are respectively 2.73 $, 3.53 and 151.31%. If the evaluation leave out the non-market output, the three indexes are only 0.96 $, 1.24 and 30.67%. The research results show that non-market services of paddy farming contribute significantly to human well-being. Therefore, in order to protect the multi-functionality of paddy farming and achieve the sustainable management, the government should take reasonable measures and make incentive plans.
... Empirical testing of the usefulness of these indices is critical to our assessment of the relation between emergy values and the viability of environmental systems. This testing must build on the simple relations between emergy-and market-based values or indices that are currently derivable from previous valuations of similar systems or goods and services (Levine and Butler, 1982;Odum et al., 1987). Identifying specific factors that account for the observed convergences and divergences and quantifying the relations among them might begin to address this policy need. ...
To protect human and environmental welfare, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aims to base environmental regulations and policies on sound scientific and economic analyses. EPA has accordingly conducted analyses of both environmental and economic impacts of regulations for three decades but has yet to develop an effective methodology for the integrated assessment of impacts on the larger system as a whole, with social, economic, and environmental processes and interactions all considered within a consistent, unified, and realistic framework. Assessments that account for the integrated nature of these processes are crucial to avoid the oversights that can lead to a less-than-optimal management or protection of our environmental resources due to inadequate or erroneous information, poor decisions, or maladapted institutional resources. To address this need, we are investigating the linkages of socioeconomic processes, as driven by preference formation and satisfaction, with the environmental processes of available-energy exchange and transformation that provide our basic life support. We report here on an initial step in this effort, in which we compare emergetic and economic valuations in terms of their equilibrium orientations, underlying conceptions of value, and potential contributions to an integrated analytical framework for the evaluation of policy impacts on socioeconomic-environmental systems.
... Although many emergy evaluations have been performed (Odum et al., 1987;Brown and Ulgiati, 2002;Brown and Buranakarn, 2003) and many UEVs have been calculated (Odum, 1996;Buranakarn, 1998;Bastianoni et al., 2009;Campbell and Ohrt, 2009;Heberling and Hopton, 2010), the information set needed for emergy evaluations is presently incomplete, because there are still many critical values for products and services that are unknown or not well documented. For example, transformities for the BAE + 2 are needed to establish equivalences among the gaseous and other wastes produced by economic production processes in order to estimate the expected concomitant environmental damage caused by these wastes and for the development of fair trading and mitigation schemes. ...
In this volume, 42 papers are presented that resulted from the 8th Biennial Emergy Conference held in Gainesville, Florida in January 2014. Some of these were published elsewhere as journal articles, and for those papers, we include the abstract and the citation for the article. Because of the large numbers of papers, we have organized them into “Themes” or sections, spanning from theory, ecosystem analysis and technology applications to analysis of agricultural, rural, economic and social systems, and ending with advances in emergy methodology. A quick scan through the Table of Contents demonstrates the varied applicability of the emergy methodology, with papers addressing theoretical concepts, ecosystem services, urban waste issues, technology, agriculture, energy sources, regional and national analyses, and many other subjects.
Held every two years in Gainesville on the University of Florida campus, the “Emergy Conference” has grown steadily from about 35 participants in 1999 to over 85 participants in the January 2014 conference. The proceedings of the conference, published by the Center for Environmental Policy at the University of Florida has increased in size from a book of 26 papers resulting from the 1999 conference to 42 papers from the 2014 conference. The Conference is truly international, bringing together scientists representing over 25 countries from the continents of Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America.
... Emergy evaluations determine value based on a specifi c system's spatial boundaries and the values of products and services are constrained by the emergy of total resource fl ows that enter the system from outside and by the internal emergy fl ows derived from the natural capital storages within the system. Odum et al. [22] provided the fi rst comparison of economic market value and emergy value of environmental resources by analyzing the water supply system of Texas (Em$ values were obtained by dividing measured emergy fl ows in rain, groundwater, etc. by the EMR of the United States in 1985, 2.2E+12 semj/$). They found that environmental products like the rain (Em$ 0.035 m −3 ), rivers (Em$ 0.09 m −3 ), and ground water (Em$ 0.25 m −3 ) on the Texas plains represented quantifi able values using emergy, but water fl ows were not valued by markets until they were extracted for human use. ...
One of the greatest problems that global society faces in the 21st century is to accurately determine the
value of the work contributions that the environment makes to support society. This work can be valued
by economic methods, both market and nonmarket, as well as by accounting methods that determine the
inputs required for the production of a good or service. All commonly used economic valuation methods are
subjective and attempt to capture the value that people assign to ecosystem products and services based on
their preferences; whereas, emergy methods are objective and take an accounting perspective that determines value based on the sum of the energy, material, and information inputs required for the production of a good or service without double-counting. Non-economic value as measured by emergy exceeds the market value of the same product or service in a predictable manner with the difference between the two narrowing for more highly processed products and services. When nonmarket estimates of value are added to market value to get the total economic value of an ecosystem’s contributions to society, in theory, the values obtained can be either more or less than those found from an emergy evaluation of the same system. Values of environmental goods and services determined through emergy evaluations can promote better decision-making by providing an objective check on the subjective values assigned by economic methods using
human perceptions of value, which are invariably based on incomplete information.
... Estes dois conceitos -eMergia e Transformidade -possibilitam a análise adequada e mais abrangente do funcionamento da economia e do ambiente (Huang, 1991;Odum,1988). Va- lores associados a alterações do ambiente aquático, como perdas de capacidade hidrodinâmica e química da água, são exemplos de resultados cuja determinação pode ser objeto de uma análise eMergética. ...
... Ref. of UEV (Table C1eC6): a. [7], b. [2], c. [40], d. [4], e. [43], f. [39], g. [42], h. [46], i. [65], j. [66], k. Furniture is estimated with 123-moving.com ...
... In Table 2, the imports of goods and services are quantified and the equivalent amounts of emergy are classified as F2. The transformities of each entry are reported on relative rows with the corresponding reference: a (Odum et al. [2]), b (Tiezzi [3]), c (Bastianoni et al. [4]), d (Ulgiati et al. [5]), e (Bastianoni et al. [6]), f (Brown and Arding [7]), g (Tiezzi [8]), h (Ulgiati et al. [9]), i (Tiezzi [10]), j (Odum [11]), k (Odum and Odum [12]), l (Odum and Arding [13]), m (Odum and Odum [14]), n (Bjorklund et al. [15]), o (Odum [1]), p (Bastianoni et al. [16]). Values are in scientific format (for example, 1.50E+2 means 1.50 x 10 2 that is equivalent to 150). ...
This paper shows an appraisal of local sustainability through an environmental
accounting method applied to a region with reference to its population, human
activities, natural cycles, infrastructures and other settings. Environmental
resources locally used, whether directly or indirectly, from both renewable
energy flows and storages of material are investigated.
In this paper the Emergy Synthesis is applied to the Province of Pescara
(Italy) and its districts, in order to evaluate the main flows of energy and
materials that locally supply the territorial system, including human systems,
with reference to their actual environmental cost.
Once expressed in units of the same form of energy through the emergy
evaluation, categories of resource consumptions and systems of varying scales
and organization are compared. Furthermore, indexes of environmental
performance based on emergy are calculated.
Keywords: emergy analysis, sustainability indicators, environmental accounting.
1 Introduction
This research proposes the results of an environmental assessment of a territorial
system, which will be conducted through the emergy synthesis. The system, in
fact, may be seen as an open thermodynamic system interacting and depending
on the natural environment, whose existence would not be possible without the
activity of survival systems.
Emergy synthesis is an environmental accounting method based on
thermodynamics that enables the integration of economic and ecological aspects:
... Estes dois conceitos -eMergia e Transformidade -possibilitam a análise adequada e mais abrangente do funcionamento da economia e do ambiente (Huang, 1991;Odum,1988). Va- lores associados a alterações do ambiente aquático, como perdas de capacidade hidrodinâmica e química da água, são exemplos de resultados cuja determinação pode ser objeto de uma análise eMergética. ...
... Estes dois conceitos -eMergia e Transformidade -possibilitam a análise adequada e mais abrangente do funcionamento da economia e do ambiente (Huang, 1991;Odum,1988). Va- lores associados a alterações do ambiente aquático, como perdas de capacidade hidrodinâmica e química da água, são exemplos de resultados cuja determinação pode ser objeto de uma análise eMergética. ...
... Consideramos o método emergético uma valiosa ferramenta científica, quase atingindo sua maturidade plena, mas ainda assim capaz de conquistar estágios superiores. A fim de aprendê-la (uma vez que estávamos distantes da Universidade da Flórida), estudamos, a partir da literatura disponível, como o método de balanço de emergia se modificou durante os últimos 15 anos (Odum, 1987;Odum, 1996;Odum, Odum e Brown, 1997). Reconhecemos que um acréscimo foi alcançado durante este período, movendo-se lentamente do ponto de vista dos ecólogos naturalistas para o amplo campo da ecologia e para os analistas de sistemas econômicos. ...
RESUMO Em função de nosso trabalho como analistas de emergia da agricultura e de sistemas agro-industriais de países do terceiro mundo, temos considerações a fazer aos nossos colegas presentes neste importante encontro, cuja maior parte vem dos países centrais: (1) Há uma carência na literatura sobre emergia, principalmente a produzida nos países do primeiro mundo, nos quais a agricultura não se beneficia mais de subsídios da Natureza, de modelos adequados para descrever alguns sistemas agrícolas com os quais estamos nos ocupando: pequenas fazendas de subsistência, trabalhadores rurais compostos em famílias de tamanho médio e novas experiências em cultivo: orgânico, biológico, ecológico, biodinâmico e sistemas agroflorestais de produção cíclica e variada. (2) Nos diagramas de fluxo de energia e nas análises emergéticas dos sistemas agrícolas dos países do norte a biodiversidade local não é levada em consideração, assim como não há índices para se considerar a biodiversidade local como suporte de sustentabilidade. (3) Em nossos países há uma certa deficiência de informa ções: quase não há dados disponíveis sobre análises energéticas para a agricultura local. Portanto, em muitos cálculos, somos forçados a trabalhar com fluxos monetários. (4) Nós temos algumas dúvidas em relação ao conceito e ao procedimento para medir a transformidade quando o sistema estudado produz diversos produtos (inclusive resíduos e perda de recursos). Nós estudamos alguns sistemas agrícolas para os quais a Natureza contribui de maneira fundamental para a produtividade das fazendas, quase como núcleo do sistema. O estoque local de biodiversidade possibilita incorporar matéria e diferentes tipos de energia, a partir do meio-ambiente regional, e impedir o uso de recursos externos tanto na produção da fazenda quanto no consumo familiar. Os diagramas destes s istemas agroecológicos, obtidos por nós, são muito diferentes daqueles da agricultura comercial baseada em recursos não renováveis que vemos nos livros. Estamos revendo o conceito de eficiência emergética, assim como fazendo algumas propostas para a modificação dos procedimentos de cálculo de balanços de emergia e, também, para o cálculo da transformidade.
... O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar como evoluiu o método de avaliação emergética de produtos agrícolas, analisando os trabalhos publicados sobre a produção de milho e sugerir uma planilha adequada para aproveitar os dados existentes na literatura brasileira sobre custos de matérias-primas agrícolas. Basicamente utilizamos para o nosso estudo as análises de Odum (1984), Odum (1987), Ulgiati e colaboradores (1994), Comar e Ortega (1996) e Pillet (1993). ...
RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar como evoluiu o método de avaliação emergética de produtos agrícolas, analisando os trabalhos publicados sobre a produção de milho e sugerir uma planilha adequada para aproveitar os dados existentes na literatura brasileira sobre custos de matérias-primas agrícolas. Basicamente utilizamos para o nosso estudo as análises de Odum (1984), Odum (1987), Ulgiati e colaboradores (1994), Comar e Ortega (1996) e Pillet (1993). Tendo em mãos essas informações, aplicamos a metodologia emergética ao estudo de um caso brasileiro usando as valiosas informações publicadas pela empresa de consultoria FNP (1996). Estes dados são bastante detalhados, porém expressos em unidades monetárias (dólar) e desconsideram os fatores ambientais e a estrutura de organização da produção. Após comparar os resultados, elaboramos uma proposta de planilha para análise energética da produção de milho (LEIA) que usa alguns dados da FNP e incorpora os valores em falta (ambientais e outros) e que podem servir de modelo para analisar o balanço emergético de outros produtos agrícolas. INTRODUÇÃO Reconhecemos a importância da análise emergética desenvolvida pelo Dr. H.T. Odum e colaboradores da Universidade da Flórida (Odum, 1996), porém, para poder entendê-la, aproveitá-la e repassar estes conhecimentos aos alunos brasileiros, consideramos necessário mostrar os cálculos passo a passo, entender e explicar os diagramas de fluxo de energia e analisar e comparar os resultados obtidos. Selecionamos o caso do milho porque foi estudado em diversas datas e locais por pesquisadores que usam a metodologia energética.
... This approach to studying systems of interacting ecological and economic elements has been applied at many different scales in many parts of the globe to assist environmental decision-making and discern the real basis for wealth. A few representative studies among many, are Odum et al. (1987), Doherty et al. (1993), Ulgiati et al. (1994, Brown and Ulgiati (1999), Odum et al. (2000) and Tilley and Swank (2003). At the national scale, emergy analysis provides unique insight into the resource basis of economic organization. ...
Emergy evaluations at the national scale provide unique insight into the resource basis of economic organization. The existing framework for emergy analysis at the national scale is well-defined, with tables for quantifying and aggregating system inputs and computing indices to summarize condition (Odum, 1996). However, the processes of gathering raw data necessary for tabular synthesis, and applying consistent energy conversions and unit emergy values for translating physical flows to emergy units, have not been standardized. In addition, inconsistencies among data sources at the national level can confound comparative analysis between nations. We have developed a global emergy database containing the primary data, energy conversion ratios and unit emergy values needed to calculate national system flows for the year 2000 for 134 nations. Look-up tables of primary data were created from various international datasets, including GIS grid coverages for renewable flows. Look-up tables of energy conversion ratios and unit emergy values were developed from the literature and recent models estimating crustal element specific emergies and global soil transformities. The database incorporates a standardized template within which primary flows are calculated and aggregated into the emergy summary flows and indices. This template is dynamic, meaning updates to the raw data or transformities automatically propagate through to the final indices. The internal production, non-renewable extraction, and trade flows are analyzed in greater detail than with previous national analyses, and methods were developed for estimating the nonrenewable fraction of fisheries, forestry, soil erosion and water extraction. Formalizing data sources, line item detail, energy conversion calculations, and assignment of transformities to flows will strengthen the power and credibility of comparative national emergy analysis.
... Estes dois conceitos -eMergia e Transformidade -possibilitam a análise adequada e mais abrangente do funcionamento da economia e do ambiente (Huang, 1991;Odum,1988). Va- lores associados a alterações do ambiente aquático, como perdas de capacidade hidrodinâmica e química da água, são exemplos de resultados cuja determinação pode ser objeto de uma análise eMergética. ...
O governo brasileiro está executando um am¬bicioso plano de expansão de produção de energia que inclui a construção de 30 hidrelétricas (UHE) na Amazônia até 2023. Este plano e sua execução têm sido questionados em vários aspectos. Especialistas têm argumentado que parte da expansão é desnecessária, pois parte da demanda poderia ser reduzida com o aumento de eficiência energética e a demanda restante poderia ser suprida pelo aumento de geração de outras fontes como energia solar, biomassa e eólica (ver Capítulo III deste livro).
Dentre os riscos ambientais da implantação das hidrelétricas, o aumento de desmatamento é um dos mais importantes, pois contribui para perdas de biodiversidade e emissões de gases do efeito estufa (GEE). As mudancas climáticas decorrentes das emissões de GEE poria em risco a própria geração de energia por meio da redução das chuvas.
Alguns defensores das hidrelétricas argumen¬tam que a área de desmatamento direto decorrente da instalação do reservatório e infraestru¬tura de construção é relativamente pequena. Entretanto, a construção também estimula o desmatamento indireto. Por exemplo, o aumento de imigrantes para trabalhar na obra e para aproveitar outras oportunidades aumenta a demanda local por produtos agropecuários. Da mesma forma, a promessa de novos inves¬timentos gera expectativa de valorização das terras. Para aproveitar este potencial, especula¬dores ocupam as terras e usam o desmatamento para sinalizar sua posse. O risco de desmatamento indireto deve ser minimizado tanto pelos construtores quanto pelo poder público. Isto envolveria, por exemplo, intensificar a fis¬calização e aumentar sua eficácia e criar Unidades de Conservação. Os custos para reduzir este risco também deveriam ser considerados no planejamento geral das obras.
Para ajudar nas discussões sobre a pertinência e os custos para compensar e prevenir o risco de aumento de desmatamento na Amazônia, neste capítulo apresentamos uma estimativa do desmatamento indireto associado as 12 UHEs do complexo Tapajós. Focamos nestas áreas porque teriam um efeito agregado em uma região e porque várias dessas UHEs foram consideradas prioritárias pelo governo.
Os resultados foram projetados para um cenário futuro nos próximos 20 anos com base em projeções de aumento populacional em função da implantação das 12 UHEs. Estas poderiam atrair em torno de 63 mil imigrantes permanentes até 2032 nas regiões do Alto e Baixo Tapajós. Em decorrência disso, o risco de desmatamento aumentaria em 950.900 hectares em 20 anos – ou o equivalente a uma média de 47.500 hectares por ano. Isto equivaleria a um aumento de 8,3% em relação ao cenário sem os projetos.
O desmatamento adicional por causa das hidrelétricas aumentaria em 5% as emissões de gases do efeito estufa (GEE) decorrentes das mudanças do uso do solo e em 5,5% das decorrentes do setor de energia, em comparação com as emissões de 2012 estimadas pelo Sistema de Estimativa de Emissões de GEE.
Plantas e animais também sofreriam: quase 690 milhões de espécimes seriam atingidos pelo alagamento e desmatamento indireto, considerando apenas as árvores com tronco de pelo menos 10 centímetros de diâmetro, os primatas e as aves. O risco de desmatamento aumentaria em 44 das 53 Áreas Protegidas existentes na região, incluindo Unidades de Conservação e Terras Indígenas.
Concluímos o trabalho com uma análise sobre como mitigar os riscos do desmatamento associados às UHEs, considerando as propostas de mitigação dos empreendedores daquelas que já possuíam estudos de impacto ambiental e as lições das ações contra o desmatamento na região.
... Few past studies refer specifically to potable water production plants (e.g. Odum et al., 1987). The first most comprehensive survey is given by Buenfil (2001), who compared different household technologies with tap water from several municipal treatment plants in Florida. ...
... Time series research on EF has been done in order to "track" the amount of natural resource a population used in related to the carrying capacity of the ecological system of a region, nation or the globe (e.g., Wackernagel et al., 2004a,b;Erb, 2004). Meanwhile, through the environmental window of the ecological system, the amount of the previously used-up, (directly or indirectly) available energy in the transformation process (Odum et al., 1987a;Odum, 1988Odum, , 1996 is analyzed in a sys-tems ecology view to "track" both the quality and quantity of the resource used and embody the degraded available energy in an organized hierarchy. ...
The resource consumption of the Chinese society from 1981 to 2001 is investigated using ecological footprint (EF) and emergetic ecological footprint (EEF). The latter is a newly development modification of ecological footprint based on ecological thermodynamics. Individual sectors in society are described in detail corresponding to the EF and EEF components based on different views of ecological production. The EF and EEF intensities are also presented to depict the resource consumption level corresponding to unit economic output. Finally, EEF is suggested to serve as a modified indicator of EF to illustrate the resource, environment, and population activity, and thereby reflecting the ecological overshoot of the general ecological system.
... Mass, energy, and money flows were converted to their respective standard units from data acquired from the CWTS performance analysis, the cost analysis, CAR reports, journal articles, or estimated from typical values observed in the region. UEVs came from Odum (1996), Geber and Björklund (2001), and emergy evaluations compiled at the Center for Environmental Policy at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Brandt-Williams, 2002; Brown and Bardi, 2001; Buranakarn, 1998; McGrane, 1994; Odum et al., 1983 Odum et al., , 1987 Vivas, 2004). All UEVs were corrected to the most recent emergy baseline as suggested by Brown and Bardi (2001). ...
The main water bodies in the Bogotá Savannah have been seriously polluted due to the mismanagement of domestic, agricultural, and industrial wastewater. While there are a number of wastewater treatment facilities in the region, most do not function properly. There is a great need for inexpensive and sustainable wastewater treatment systems that are not technologically sophisticated and that do not require intensive management. The main goal of this study was to quantify the performance and sustainability of treatment wetlands and existing wastewater treatment systems in this region. Using data from the literature, a treatment wetland model was developed, which focused on pollutant removal. The modeled performance was compared to a system of waste stabilization ponds and a sequencing batch reactor. The three systems were subject to cost analysis and an emergy evaluation, leading to the assessment of indicators of cost-benefit for comparison. The economic analysis suggested that the net annual cost of the treatment wetland was US$ 14,672, compared to US$ 14,201 for the stabilization ponds and US$ 54,887 for the batch reactor. The emergy evaluations show that the ponds have the lowest annual emergy flow (6.65+16sej/yr), followed by the constructed wetland (2.88E+17sej/yr) and the batch reactor (8.86E+17sej/yr). These results were combined to estimate treatment ratios (contaminants removed per lifetime cost, and contaminants removed per total emergy), cost ratios (cost per volume of water, annual cost per capita, and construction cost per capita), and emergy ratios (treatment yield, renewable emergy, lifetime emprice, construction emprice, non-renewable emergy, empower density, environmental loading, total emergy per volume of water, and emergy per capita).
The efficient coupling of a water allocation model with a reservoir operation model is key to maximizing the benefits of inter-basin water transfer (IBWT) projects. Most existing studies of IBWT operations and management do not account for matching water transfer and demand, and instead seek to optimize either the water allocation model or the reservoir scheduling model. In this paper, we propose a multi-stage joint optimization framework for reservoir scheduling and water allocation models that considers the key operation indicators of the project in the water source area and the multi-dimensional objectives in the receiving area. We derived a functional relationship that balances considerations regarding water, the economy, and ecology (WEE) in the receiving area and applied it to the water allocation model. The reservoir operation model was developed by considering the multiple benefits of water transfer and power generation in the water resource area. To reduce the complexity of the model and the tightness of its coupling, the model was divided into multiple stages of optimization and solved using the Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm Based on Decomposition (MOEA/D) algorithm. The results showed the allocation schemes of water resources influenced the competition between the economic and ecological benefits. Using the WEE model, a more reasonable water transfer and allocation method can be selected according to different development needs. As such, the water shortage rate of each user in the receiving area is kept below 8%, and there is significant improvement in all indicators compared with the conventional scheme. In addition, this model enables the reservoir group to achieve a power generation capacity of more than 5.64 kWh with the goal of meeting the water transfer demand, maintaining the reservoir empty rate at about 10%, and reducing the risk of water shortages. Our study can serve as a reference for effectively addressing the challenges associated with IBWT projects, and it can inform socioeconomic development in receiving areas while optimizing water transmission and allocation.
In the article, on the basis of quantifying the emergy water ecological footprint, a sustainability evaluation system for the overall water ecological economic system of the basin and each province (region) was proposed. And using the subjective and objective combination of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Entropy Weight Method (EWM) to determine the weight of the indicator system, a TOPSIS model for sustainability evaluation was constructed. And taking the Yellow River Basin as an example, the results indicate that (1) Throughout the entire basin, the sustainability of the water ecological economic system showed a fluctuating upward trend year by year during the study period, from 0.37 to 0.51. (2) In each province (region), the sustainability of the water ecological economic system had gathered in space. The overall sustainability level of the upstream Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces is high, always at level (I). The overall sustainability level of the midstream Ningxia and Neimenggu was low, always at level (IV). The overall sustainability level of the downstream Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong provinces is high, rising gradually over time, from level (III) to level (II) or (I). Against the backdrop of the rapid development of the economy and society, the contradiction between economic and social development, ecological environment protection, and sustainable utilization of water resources is becoming increasingly severe, which has become a key factor restricting the sustainable development of the ecological economic system in Yellow River Basin. Multidimensional comprehensive evaluation of the sustainability level of the regional water ecological economic system is a prerequisite for identifying sustainable development issues in the Yellow River Basin, and also the basis for formulating targeted policies for sustainable utilization of regional water resources and high-quality economic development.
Abstract：
Carrying Capacity（CC）was first coined in biology and ecology in the 1920s,and later developed rapidly in related sciences such as natural resources science and environment science. The concept of Resources and Environment Carrying Capacity（RECC）,from theoretical investigation to practical implementation,has become an effective and operational tool to describe development restrictions and quantify regional sustainable development. RECC research has become a hot topic methodologically and theoretically in ecology,geography and natural resource and environment. It primarily focuses on the ultimate limit of population and economic development on earth. After briefly looking at the origin of the concept and early headway,we summarize RECC research from land resource carrying capacity,water resource carrying capacity,and environmental carrying capacity（environment capacity）. The following evaluating methods,including ecological footprint and virtual land （or the biological productive land by ecological footprint）,water footprint and virtual water （or the global flow of virtual water）,emergy analysis and virtual energy（or energy equilibrium）,are considered as important research progresses in the past century. However,there is still lack of a standard set of evaluation theories and methodologies for RECC research in China and globally,leading to much debate over the objectivity and comparability of resultant figures. Concerning this issue,we propose that RECC research in the future should pay more attention to enhancing exploratory studies in basic theories and carrying mechanisms,thresholds determination and synthetical calculation,technological standards/manuals setting,measurable assessment and systematical integration. More effort is needed to promote the standardization,digitalization and systematization of RECC research in China before according with national practical and operational demands.
Key words： resources and environment carrying capacity （RECC） resources carrying capacity environment carrying capacity carrying capacity
O conceito de emergia ou memória energética (Scienceman,1987, Odum,1996, Ortega,
1998) permite formular todos os fatores que contribuem na produção de bens e serviços
num mesmo denominador: a energia da radiação solar equivalente ou necessária para o
processo integral de produção. Desta maneira, propõe-se, aqui, a quantificar e valorar a
contribuição da Natureza (fontes de energia renováveis e não-renováveis), que outras
técnicas geralmente não contabilizam ou a fazem de maneira parcial.
Para fazer a análise dos fluxos de emergia de ecossistemas dominados pelo homem é
indispensável contar com a informação sobre a equivalência em Joules de energia solar(
sej) e do monetário circulante (sej/dólar) para o ano de referência. Para tal, é necessário
fazer a análise emergética do sistema Brasil para estimar a emergia movimentada no país,
durante o período anual desejado, e sua relação com o circulante convertido em dólares
americanos. A análise dos fluxos de emergia de um país pode servir para calcular o saldo
de emergia e as taxas de intercâmbio de emergia que o sistema nacional obtém ao importar
e exportar produtos e serviços. Com isto, a análise emergética de um país busca contribuir
para a discussão de novas políticas públicas que levem à preservação de nossos ativos em
“capital natural ” e a uma nova forma de planejar a gestão de produtos, processos e
serviços, na perspectiva do Desenvolvimento Sustentável. O Eco-Desenvolvimento
agrícola, do ponto de vista emergético, consiste em propor sistemas de extração e
aproveitamento agro-industrial mais adequados para os diferentes ecossistemas do país,
em função de seus recursos humanos, da infra-estrutura econômica e da capacidade de
produção renovável de seus ecossistemas.
O presente trabalho analisa a composição energética e material do PNB brasileiro, valendose
da metodologia emergética para estimar os valores das energias naturais, em termos de
Joules de energia solar, incorporadas aos produtos, processos e serviços no território
nacional. A partir desse mapa (balanço de emergia), realizado para os anos de 1981, 1989 e
1996, extraímos índices que nos possibilitam compreender o papel da natureza na geração
de riqueza no Brasil, o impacto das atividades humanas nos ecossistemas brasileiros, bem
como pensar formas de valorizar os recursos naturais indispensáveis à nossa subsistência.
As pesquisas científicas em torno da metodologia emergética continuam progredindo e
considera-se que, em breve, contar-se-á com o instrumental adequado para contabilizar
também a contribuição da informação (cultura humana e biodiversidade) nos processos
produtivos. Porém, o avanço existente nesta metodologia já permite fazer análises de
sistemas de maneira mais completa que as metodologias econômicas ou físicas
tradicionais, levando-se a um novo entendimento dos ecossistemas, o qual possibilitará
discutir de forma mais abrangente as questões centrais da Sustentabilidade Ecológica e
Econômica.
The main objective of this work is to evaluate the natural capital and ecosystem services of the Peri Lake System and the role of the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) as a flag species to change adverse realities, based on system ecology and emergy synthesis. The knowledge produced is used for the modification of an adverse reality, with the active involvement of researchers through institutional support. Main services with market values provided by the Peri Lake are research, water supply, and fish harvest. The main economic activities are related to water supply, fishing, and tourism. However, these activities are not in balance. The historic of the fishery in the Peri Lake is marked by conflicts of interests and a strong decrease on capture over the last 18 years. Two main fishery groups are active in the area, one professional and another amateur. The specific case of the Neotropical otter is emblematic. As a top carnivore, it is responsible for a top down cascade effect in the whole trophic chain with consequences and effects still poorly known. Its evaluation is of paramount importance and its protection in the Peri Lake requires not only scientific research but also a social mobilization of the community in the Peri Lake, Armação and surrounding villages, including traditional communities. In this research, Peri Lake will be sampled, including the Sangradouro Channel. First, a system diagram is constructed to organize the thinking and the relationships between components and pathways of exchange and resource flow. It is an overview of the system, combining different sources of information and organizing the efforts. The second step is to construct the emergy synthesis tables of flows directly from the diagrams. It accounts the annual flows of material, energy, and information that support the system, such as materials, energy, and information. Finally, emergy indices are calculated in order to summarize and relate emergy flows of the economy with those of the environment. Quantities of stored emergy of environmental resources are calculated from the sum of the emergy of all inputs and then multiply them by the time it takes to accumulate the storage. To calculate the emergy of economic storages, all inputs of energy, materials and labor to produce them will be summed. The objective is to be able to predict the economic and environmental viability. For the evaluation of renewable inputs to the Peri Lake, solar energy, rainfall, runoff, stream geopotential, wind, transport of phosphorus in the water column, and stream chemical potential annual averages will be used. Transformities and specific emergies are calculated for biodiversity and endangered species. They are calculated by first quantifying all the emergy used in making the product or service and dividing by the energy of the product or service. The units can be in sej/J if the product is divided by the energy or sej/g if the emergy of the product is divided by the mass. Emdollar is a measure of the money circulating in the economy as a result of the emergy flow. The emdollar is obtained by dividing the total emergy driving the economy by the economy's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The data is organized in Excel and Numbers spreadsheets, and the basic descriptive statistical analyzes will be performed by R statistic. The geographical coordinates of the records were plotted on GIS QGIS 2.2 for vector analysis. At the end this work intends to evaluate the natural capital and ecosystem services of the Peri Lake and the role of the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) as a flag species to change adverse realities, based on system ecology and emergy synthesis.
Macao is a tourist city with a dense population, but is short on natural resources. During the past 20 years, Macao’s rapid socioeconomic development has depended heavily on the tourism industry. In this chapter, we employed ecological emergy accounting to characterize the urban evolution and development that occurred in Macao from 1983 to 2004.
Our research demonstrated that by relying on an attractive gambling industry and an imbalance between imports and exports, Macao has absorbed large amounts of emergy through negative entropy inflows to support not only its survival, but also its booming development. Statistical analysis revealed that the emergy-based indicators in the present study could be divided into three categories (namely, positively and negatively correlated indicators, and non-correlated indicators) according to their correlation with development trends.
Sustainable tourism development depends on the wise use of resources and an understanding of the flows of emergy in these resources. Although emergy accounting provides a better method for measuring the sustainability of an economic system than simplistic quantifications of monetary flows, it is difficult to evaluate specific systems such as tourism due to lack of a powerful accounting method for embodied flows of materials and energy. In this chapter, we compared the four main emergy accounting approaches that are available for studying emergy flows through tourism, distinguished the consumption of emergy by tourists from the equivalent emergy their expenditures could purchase, and demonstrated the insights permitted by these approaches using a case study of tourism in Macao from 1983 to 2007.
This thesis deals with a human inhabited territory in the Indian Trans-Himalaya: the Leh District, in Ladakh, at a “crossroad of high Asia”, geographically classified “cold desert”. For many centuries the local population has led a self-reliant existence mainly based upon subsistence agriculture, pastoralism and caravan trade. Modernization, due to governmental programs, and the progressive opening to external influence and resources – i.e. globalization – characterize the current development paths. In this study, eMergy evaluation, an environmental accounting system, is utilized to assess the sustainability of the multiple interactions between human activities and the environment.
Agricultural practices at small farm level (< 1 hectare) are investigated in detail. Site specific unit emergy values (UEV, eMergy per unit product, a measure of the environmental contribution) of five staple crops (barley, wheat, pea, mustard and alfalfa) are calculated. Barley and wheat values (using manure) were 5.27E+05 and 6.64E+05 semj/J, respectively, comparable to those found in the literature for intensive modern agriculture (using chemicals), for which the order of magnitude is 10E+05 to 10E+07 semj/J. As a proxy for “man-made” agricultural soil function, a particular UEV is defined and calculated.
The anthropic dynamics of the Leh District are investigated – e.g. government development programs, land-based economy, food security (calculating import dependency ratio), off-farm economy, tourism (estimating tourist receipts), imports of goods and commodities (estimating quantities) – along with physical features and other relevant aspects. Data is collected to evaluate the sustainability of development from the eMergy point of view. A set of synthetic indices is calculated in time series (1999-2007) – i.e. eMergy per capita (EC), renewability percentage (R%), eMergy investment ratio (EIR) and environmental loading ratio (ELR).
The results indicate that: the traditional farming system is efficient (UEV) in the use of environmental resources compared to those of modern farming systems (it is therefore argued that the traditional system should be preserved and conserved); the anthropic dynamics in the District have a low impact (ELR) on the environment (ecosphere); although the use of renewable resources (R%) remains high, the sustainability of development (the degree to which the District depends on renewable resources to achieve a certain level of internal organization (EIR) and standard of living (EC)) is decreasing.
Agro-ecological system in Hubei province was comprehensively analyzed and evaluated by using emergy analysis method. The result shows that the local resources have been utilized effectively in Hubei, the agricultural modernization is high, however, Hubei’s agricultural ecosystems is unsustainable consumption-based system owing to the higher degree of environmental stress and resource dependence. Suggestions to reinforce the sustainable development of agriculture in Hubei were put forward.
Human activity is deeply funded on the availability of natural resources. They
are mostly provided for free by the environment and often neglected by
traditional accounting systems since it is difficult to express their contribution or
their physical weight in monetary unit, more familiar to most people.
Inventorying all the flows of energy and matter that feed a territorial system and
giving them a non-market value plays an important role in the field of natural
resources management, sustainability policies and territorial planning. A
physical based environmental accounting method is implemented in order to
evaluate all the resources used within the area on a common basis, beyond the
economic scheme, which allows a deeper knowledge of the system. The tool is
emergy evaluation, a thermodynamics-based approach, introduced by Howard T.
Odum during the 1980s. The use of emergy enables one to calculate some
sustainability indicators (such as Environmental Loading Ratio, Emergy per
Person, Empower Density, Emergy Investment Ratio), and is able to give a
systemic and holistic picture of the system from an environmental point of view.
The paper presents a sustainability assessment at regional level by monitoring
the use of resources and the results of the analysis could be used to design
different development models and scenarios with several implications for the
administrative activity. The results orient environmental management solutions
for territorial planning and sustainable policies.
Keywords: territorial planning, resource management, emergy evaluation;
indicators.
Sustainable construction aims to utilize environmental-friendly materials and decrease energy and material demands in the construction, operation, and maintenance of a structure. A potential obstacle to building sustainable infrastructure is the initial cost of construction, as environmental-friendly materials are often more expensive. To quantify costs with environmental trade-offs, inputs must be measured taking into account both quality and quantity. Emergy, a method that converts various energies to a common unit, the solar energy joule (sej), offers a more holistic evaluation because it takes into account the quality of inputs. Data on all inputs required to construct and operate a 176 m2 off-grid house were collected and an emergy evaluation determined it took 8.12 E14 sej/m2 without service and 4.41E15 sej/m2 with service to construct the house. Labor and service accounted for 82% of the total. Annual emergy required to operate the house in terms of electricity, propane, water, and services associated with them was 0.05E15 sej/m2/yr, a value less than those found in previous studies. Results revealed that a higher initial emergy investment into sustainable construction can result in lower annual operational emergy requirements, thus a potential emergy savings over the long term.
In Korea, an olive flounder is very popular fish food item. However, due to the increasing human population, the present catches of the olive flounder may not be sufficient to satisfy the present demand. To increase the supply of the olive flounder, aquaculture has been begun. An interest in the aquaculture of the olive flounder has been increased recently because of its characteristics of good growth and high price in the market, However, the productivity of the olive flounder aquaculture depends on economic inputs such as fuels, facilities, and labor. The rapid growths of the olive flounder aquaculture and the concerns about economic and ecological sustainability have focused peoples attention on the aquaculture industry. In this study, an energy systems model was built to simulate the variation of sustainability on the aquaculture of olive flounder, The results of simulation based on calibration data in 1995 show that olive flounder production yield and asset slowly increase to steady state because of the law of supply and demand. The results of simulation based on the variation of oil price show that the more increase the oil price, the more decrease the olive flounder economic yield and asset. Energy sources required for systems determine the sustainability of systems. Conclusionally, the present systems of the olive flounder aquaculture should be transformed to ecological-recycling systems or ecological engineering systems which depend on renewable resources rather than aquaculture systems which depend on fossil fuels, and be harmonized with the fishing fisheries by the sustainable use of renewable resources in the carrying capacity.
cantabilità biofisica, comuni italiani
Colombia’s main water bodies have been seriously polluted due to mismanagement of domestic,
agricultural, and industrial wastewater. While the country’s wastewater infrastructure has expanded
in the past decades, the selection of the existing treatment technologies has excluded important aspects
that could compromise their sustainability. Colombia and similar countries are in great need for
inexpensive and sustainable wastewater treatment systems that are not technologically sophisticated
and that do not require intensive management. Thus, the main goal of this study was to quantify the
performance and emergy requirements of a municipal wastewater treatment wetland, and to compare
this technology to others typically used in the region. A treatment wetland model, which focused on
pollutant removal, was developed. Using the results from this model and data from the literature, the
emergy required for construction and maintenance of the modeled wetland and two existing facilities
(a stabilization ponds system and a sequential batch reactor) was evaluated. The emergy evaluations
were used to estimate a number of indices to allowed comparison among the three systems. The total
emergy of the treatment wetland was 2.88E+17 sej/yr, compared to 6.65E+16 sej/yr for the
stabilization ponds, and 8.86E+17 sej/yr for the sequential batch reactor. The stabilization ponds
yielded the best results for nine of the thirteen indices presented. Therefore, It was concluded from this
study that a system of stabilization ponds can provide basic municipal wastewater treatment for the
lowest cost, although more advanced treatment can be achieved with a treatment wetland if resources
are available.
The positive and negative effects of the water conservancy and hydropower projects are analyzed based on the emergy analysis theory. The indexes content of emergy yield ratio (EYR) and environment load ratio (ELR) are redefined. In order to analyze the ecological effects quantitatively, hydraulic eco- efficiency index (HEI) is proposed to reflect its sustainable development performance. Case study shows that among the positive effects of Chinese water conservancy and hydropower engineering, hydropower, flood adjustment, water supply for industry, water supply for agriculture irrigation is the main contribution, accounting for 21.3%, 26.6%, 21.6% and 21.4%, respectively (2008). Both EYR and HEI show a downward trend, but the ELR is rising. These trends show that the ecological pressure on the environment is growing, although the water conservancy and hydropower project supply the positive effect output to us. Keywords-Eco-efficiency Index; Emergy analysis; Water Conservancy and Hydropower project
Ecosystem services (ES) are provided by healthy ecosystems and are fundamental to support human life. However, natural systems have been degraded all over the world and the process of degradation is partially attributed to the lack of knowledge regarding the economic benefits associated with ES, which usually are not captured in the market. To valuate ES without using conventional approaches, such as the human's willingness-to-pay for ecosystem goods and services, this paper uses a different method based on Energy Systems Theory to estimate prices for biogeochemical flows that affect ecosystem services by considering their emergy content converted to equivalent monetary terms. Ecosystem services related to water, carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical flows were assessed since they are connected to a range of final ecosystem services including climate regulation, hydrological regulation, food production, soil formation and others. Results in this paper indicate that aquifer recharge, groundwater flow, carbon dioxide sequestration, methane emission, biological nitrogen fixation, nitrous oxide emission and nitrogen leaching/runoff are the most critical biogeochemical flows in terrestrial systems. Moreover, monetary values related to biogeochemical flows on a global scale could provide important information for policymakers concerned with payment mechanisms for ecosystem services and costs of greenhouse gas emissions.
The “self-design” capability of a natural environment is ignored in currently practiced environmental technology and urban planning professionals. Therefore, we propose an ecological engineering approach to conduct scenarios for environmental management in the metropolitan region of Taipei. Ecological energetic analysis is applied to assess the ecological economic status and the role and contribution of solid waste and water resources in the Taipei metropolitan region. The benefit of an ecological engineering approach to the environmental quality and sustainable development of the metropolitan region is evaluated using emergy synthesis. The results indicate that Taipei metropolitan region operates its activity mainly on the imported fuels and goods and services, which account for 90% of total emergy used. The treatment of waste as resources and the use of the self-design capability of the natural environment according to the ecological engineering approach can generate positive contribution and aid the environmental quality and productive potential of the ecological economic system. It is concluded that ecological sustainability should be used as a reference of environmental quality for urban development policy.
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