Exergy and Sustainability: Insights into the Value of Exergy Analysis in Sustainability Assessment of Technological Systems

A major challenge in striving for a more sustainable society is the selection of technological systems. Given the capital intensity of industrial production plants, power generation systems and infrastructure, investment decisions create path dependencies for decades to come. It is difficult to know which technological system is preferable when...

Sustainability Maturity Model: The Pilot Sustainability Agenda-Setting in Business

The Master’s programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. Sustainable development is a young, developing field in which many standards, certificates, and initiatives are spawning. Companies are expected to work on sustainable development by its customers, investors, and society in...

Green Map: A tailormade sustainability approach for FLEX/the INNOVATIONLAB

Sustainable Product Development (SPD) is an inevitable response to the growing awareness that current production, consumption and disposal systems are not feasible on a long term. FLEX/the INNOVATIONLAB® (Flex), a design studio with more than 20 years of experience in product design, recognizes this need and wants to include sustainability in...

Failure of Engineering Artifacts: A Life Cycle Approach

Failure is a central notion both in ethics of engineering and in engineering practice. Engineers devote considerable resources to assure their products will not fail and considerable progress has been made in the development of tools and methods for understanding and avoiding failure. Engineering ethics, on the other hand, is concerned with the...