Towards a sufficiency-driven business model: Experiences and opportunities

Business model innovation is an important lever for change to tackle pressing sustainability issues. In this paper, ‘sufficiency’ is proposed as a driver of business model innovation for sustainability. Sufficiency-driven business models seek to moderate overall resource consumption by curbing demand through education and consumer engagement,...

Is reducing speed the right mitigating action to limit harmful emissions of seagoing RoRo cargo carriers?

The Energy Emission Design Index (EEDI) is an index indicating the CO2 emission per transportation effort, for example the emitted tons CO2 per ton mile, to be calculated for each new design. The required index for new designs will be gradually lowered in the coming years resulting in either improved energy efficiencies or speed reductions.<br/>...

Possibilities and consequences of the Total Cumulative Exergy Loss method in improving the sustainability of power generation

It is difficult to decide which power generation system is the most sustainable when environmental, economic and social sustainability aspects are taken into account. Problems with conventional environmental sustainability assessment methods are that no consensus exists about the applied models and weighting factors and that exergy losses are...

Radical Circular Economy

Recently the Circular Economy (CE) concept has gained momentum in the Netherlands, propounding that environmental impact reduction can provide a significant positive economical impulse. The government, larger parts of the industry as a whole, as well as the construction industry, has warmly received this approach. At first sight the CE concept...

Comprehensive modelling and sizing of PV systems from location to load

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are progressively used for decentralized electricity generation. To obtain the maximum yield from such systems, optimisation of all components is essential. In this contribution, we provide a comprehensive modelling and sizing of PV systems for any location. Three applications are here presented providing real time...

Sustainability Assessment of Power Generation Systems by Applying Exergy Analysis and LCA Methods

The selection of power generation systems is important when striving for a more sustainable society. However, the results of environmental, economic and social sustainability assessments are subject to new insights into the calculation methods and to changing needs, economic conditions and societal preferences. Researchers active in the field of...

Developments and challenges in design for sustainability of electronics

Sustainability of electronic products until recently mainly focused on improving the energy efficiency. Recently, resource efficiency has become of growing importance. Due to the use of relatively small amounts of many valuable and scarce materials, often intimately mixed, the design of electronic products deserves specific attention. From a...

Implications of Social Practice Theory for Sustainable Design

Sustainable design faces challenges at a scale and level of complexity that are ill at ease with design’s mainstream focus on products and users. Recently, social practice theory has been suggested as a promising theoretical framework to inform new ways of designing. In social practice theory, practices – socially shared entities such as...

What has to be learnt for sustainability? A comparison of bachelor engineering education competences at three European universities

In a period of harmonisation of the higher education system in Europe, a question is if also learning about sustainability at the universities is converging and what advantages this may have. This paper is an effort to present and advance the work on describing desired sustainability competences for engineering Bachelor graduates in three...

To Recycle or Not to Recycle? An Intergenerational Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycles

AbstractThis paper approaches the choice between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycles as a matter of intergenerational justice, by revealing the value conflicts in the production of nuclear energy. The closed fuel cycle improve sustainability in terms of the supply certainty of uranium and involves less long-term radiological risks and...