Abstract: This study performs an environmental techno-economic assessment (ETEA) for multiple microalgae biorefinery concepts at different locations, those being Belgium and India. The ETEA methodology, which integrates aspects of the TEA and LCA methodologies and provides a clear framework for an integrated assessment model, has been proposed and discussed. The scenario in India has a higher profitability with a NPV of (sic)40 million over a period of 10 years, while the environmental impact in Belgium is lower. The inclusion of a medium recycling step provides the best scenario from both perspectives. The crucial parameters for feasibility are the beta-caroteneprice and content, the upstream environmental impact of electricity and the maximum biomass concentration during cultivation. The identification of these parameters by the ETEA guides future technology developments and shortens the time-to-market for microalgal-based biorefineries.

Abstract: Herein, we report a transition metal-free approach for the regioselective functionalisation of benzylic C(sp3)-H bonds using alcohols and carboxylic acids as the nucleophiles. This approach provides a straightforward route for the synthesis of various benzylic ethers and esters to provide a wide generality of this system. Expediently, twelve pharmaceutically relevant compounds have been synthesized using this strategy.

Abstract: In the commercialisation of photocatalytic air purifiers, the performance as well as the cost of the catalytic material plays an important role. Where most comparative studies only regard the photocatalytic activity as a decisive parameter, in this study both activity and cost are taken into account. Using a cost-effectiveness analysis, six different commercially available TiO2-based catalysts are evaluated in terms of their activities in photocatalytic degradation of acetaldehyde as a model reaction for indoor air purification.

Abstract: In the light of global warming, this paper develops a framework to compare energy and transportation technologies in terms of cost-efficient GHG emission reduction. We conduct a simultaneous assessment of economic and environmental performances through life cycle costing and life cycle assessment. To calculate the GHG mitigation cost, we create reference systems within the base scenario. Further, we extend the concept of the mitigation cost, allowing (i) comparision of technologies given a limited investment resource, and (ii) evaluation of the direct impact of policy measures by means of the subsidized mitigation cost. The framework is illustrated with a case of solar photovoltaics (PV), grid powered battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and solar powered BEVs for a Belgian small and medium sized enterprise. The study's conclusions are that the mitigation cost of solar PV is high, even though this is a mature technology. The emerging mass produced BEVs on the other hand are found to have a large potential for cost-efficient GHG mitigation as indicated by their low cost of mitigation. Finally, based on the subsidized mitigation cost, we conclude that the current financial stimuli for all three investigated technologies are excessive when compared to the CO2 market value under the EU Emission Trading Scheme.

Abstract: The global climate is changing, and farmers must increase their adaptive capacity to avoid negative impacts. This study aimed to examine the adaptive capacity of farmers’ household to tolerate climate changes and identify factors affecting the climate in Hamadan province, Iran. The adaptive capacity was evaluated quantitatively by using 23 indicators and was categorized into high, moderate, low, and very low adaptive capacity. The study was based on a cross sectional survey and was conducted with a random sample of 280 household farmers distributed in five counties of Hamadan province in the west of the country whose climatic data revealed signs of climate change. The result showed that farmers’ negative perception toward climate change generally increases during dry seasons and decreases when the precipitation and water resources are more available. Regarding the available information, only 15% of farmers had a high level of adaptive capacity, while 10% of them were highly adapted, and 27.5% showed a very low level of adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity in the current study was influenced by some socio-economic variables including total farm size, irrigated farm size, number of agricultural land plots, and perception and knowledge of climate change.

Abstract: This study evaluates the effects of climate change on the net revenue of farmers in Japan. We adopted the Ricardian model, which implicitly accounts for farmers’ full adaptation. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, the Ricardian regression shows that changes in temperature significantly impact farmers’ net revenue. In contrast, changes in precipitation have limited effects on farmers’ net revenue. The results of future predictions showed that the effects of climate change are positive across the country, with varying degrees between north and south. These results are more optimistic than those in the existing literature, which frequently reveal negative climate change impacts in southern Japan. However, it should be noted that this model assumes full adaptation and does not consider the transition costs of farmers, and understanding the actual adaptive measures is an important remaining issue.

Abstract: The Ricardian model is a widely used approach based on cross-sectional regression analysis to estimate climate change impacts on agricultural productivity. Up until now, researchers have focused on the impacts of gradual changes in temperature and precipitation, even though climate change is known to encompass also changes in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. This research investigates the impact of heatwaves on European agriculture, additional to the impact of average climate change. Using a dataset of more than 60,000 European farms, the study examines whether adding a measure for heatwaves to the Ricardian model influences its results. We find that heatwaves have a minor impact on agricultural productivity and that this impact is moderated by average temperature. In colder regions, farm productivity increases with the number of heatwave days. For warmer regions, land values decrease with heatwave frequency. Despite the moderating effect, the marginal effect of heatwave frequency, i.e. the percentage change in agricultural land values caused by one more heatwave day per year, is small in comparison to the effect of average temperature increases. Non-marginal effects are found to be relevant, but only in the case of increased heatwave frequency. According to our results, farms are not expected to suffer more from extreme weather than from mean climate change, as was claimed by several previous studies.

Abstract: Europe has somewhere between 150,000 and 500,000 landfill sites, with an estimated 90% of them being “non-sanitary” landfills, predating the EU Landfill Directive of 1999/31/EC. These older landfills tend to be filled with municipal solid waste and often lack any environmental protection technology. “ Doing nothing”, state-of-theart aftercare or remediating them depends largely on technical, societal and economic conditions which vary between countries. Beside “ doing nothing' and landfill aftercare, there are different scenarios in landfill mining, from re-landfilling the waste into ”sanitary landfills" to seizing the opportunity for a combined resource-recovery and remediation strategy. This review article addresses present and future issues and potential opportunities for landfill mining as an embedded strategy in current waste management systems through a multi-disciplinary approach. In particular, three general landfill mining strategies are addressed with varying extents of resource recovery. These are discussed in relation to the main targets of landfill mining: (i) reduction of the landfill volume (technical), (ii) reduction of risks and impacts (environmental) and (iii) increase in resource recovery and overall profitability (economic). Geophysical methods could be used to determine the characteristics of the landfilled waste and subsurface structures without the need of an invasive exploration, which could greatly reduce exploration costs and time, as well as be useful to develop a procedure to either discard or select the most appropriate sites for (E)LFM. Material and energy recovery from land-filled waste can be achieved through mechanical processing coupled with thermochemical valorization technologies and residues upcycling techniques. Gasification could enable the upcycling of residues after thermal treatment into a new range of eco-friendly construction materials based on inorganic polymers and glass-ceramics. The multi-criteria assessment is directly influenced by waste- and technology related factors, which together with site-specific conditions, market and regulatory aspects, influence the environmental, economic and societal impacts of (E)LFM projects.

Abstract: As landfill mining (LFM) gains public attention, systematic assessment of its economic potential is deemed necessary. The aim of this review is to critically analyze the usefulness and validity of previous economic assessments of LFM. Following the life cycle costing (LCC) framework, (i) the employed methods based on goal and scope, technical parameters and data inventory, and modelling choices were contrasted with respect to (ii) the synthesized main findings based on net profitability and economic performance drivers. Results showed that the selected studies (n=15) are mostly case study-specific and concluded that LFM has a weak economic potential, hinting at the importance of favorable market and regulation settings. However, several method issues are apparent as costs and revenues are accounted at different levels of aggregation, scope and scale-from process to sub-process level, from private to societal economics, and from laboratory to pilot-scale, respectively. Moreover, despite the inherent large uncertainties, more than half of the studies did not perform any uncertainty or sensitivity analyses posing validity issues. Consequently, this also limits the usefulness of results as individual case studies and as a collective, towards a generic understanding of LFM economics. Irrespective of case study-specific or generic aims, this review recommends that future assessments should be learning-oriented. That is, uncovering granular information about what builds up the net profitability of LFM, to be able to systematically determine promising paths for the development of cost-efficient projects.

Abstract: Perfectly operating markets only exist in theory. Market failures are known to not only inhibit the proper functioning of the market, but also affect sustainability and thus a sustainability transition. In this regard, much attention has been paid to externalities or missing markets, even though these are not the only market failures. In this paper, we argue that market power and its relationship with sustainability has been neglected, despite the fact that, back in 1931, Hotelling indicated the connection between the two concepts. However, research that has been dealing with this connection has not been comprehensive and has only looked at one aspect of sustainability and market power. Due to the rising relevance of market power as well as of sustainability concerns, the connection between the two deserves thorough attention. Accordingly, we propose initiating a new interdisciplinary research agenda to comprehensively analyze the complex relationship between market power and sustainability.

Abstract: An important issue in biodiversity valuation is gaining a better understanding of how biodiversity conservation affects economic activities and human welfare. Quantifying the economic benefits of biodiversity for human well-being is not straightforward. Here, we expand the ecosystem service cascade by (i) attributing a methodology to the different steps of the cascade to assess the effects of changes in functional group diversity on economic activities; (ii) including multiple attributes for defining functional diversity and (iii) integrating a dynamic ecological model simulating complex interactions and feedbacks between species with an economic model assessing the effects of changes in functional group diversity for gross revenues. The stepwise methodological framework integrates a production function approach with a market price-based approach in order to investigate the indirect use value of functional group diversity based on the ecological role of species in the ecosystem. The methodology is applied to estimate the relationship between the gross economic value of Chinook salmon (Pacific Northwest, United States) and the diversity of freshwater macroinvertebrates. The results of our analysis emphasize the importance of biological diversity for sustaining ecosystem goods and services. The analysis provides a tractable framework for quantitatively exploring the economic consequences of changes in functional group diversity.

Abstract: In spite of global actions, biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate. Despite the need for objectively comparable monetary standards to include biodiversity arguments in policymaking, research on the relationship between species diversity and its valuation from a societal perspective is still scarce. In this paper, a methodological framework for the valuation of natural predators based on their ecological role in the agroecosystem is introduced. The framework integrates a dynamic ecological model simulating interactions between species with an economic model, thereby quantifying the effect of reduced numbers of natural predators on the net farm income. The model attributes an objective monetary value to increased species diversity through the changes in the provisioning of a marketable good. Results indicate that the loss of three predators could decrease net farm income with 88.86 ha− 1 to 2186.5 ha− 1. For the pear production sector in Flanders in 2011, this constitutes to an indirect use value of 0,68 million for one predator and 16.63 million for the presence of three predators. The aim is to provide a justification for the argument for biodiversity conservation, based on the ecological function of species, through the delivery of comparable monetary standards.

Abstract: Despite the importance of biosphere reserves in Iran's livelihood and welfare, the economic significance of Hara Biosphere Reserve has never been comprehensively studied. This study examines the current importance of Hara Biosphere Reserve (HBR) in local livelihood and welfare. Using a household survey, data were collected through a questionnaire, key informant interviews and direct observations. Two hundred and forty-four households were randomly selected from 10 villages through proportional sampling. Results showed that non-environmental income was the first driver of the total income, poverty alleviation and narrowing income inequality gap. Park income was the second. The results also showed that excluding park income from total income would significantly increase headcount poverty, widen the poverty gap, and raise the Gini coefficient. Wealthier households had the greatest absolute income from the environment, including forest, fishing and fodder. However, the poorest group had smallest absolute income from these sources. Thus, the study demonstrated that wealthier households are responsible for the overharvesting of environmental resources. Interestingly, the study showed that wealthier households are more dependent on profitable environmental incomes sources while the poorest are more dependent on non-profitable ones. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: The Sustainable Value approach integrates the efficiency with regard to environmental, social and economic resources into a monetary indicator. It gained significant popularity as evidenced by diverse applications at the corporate level. However, its introduction as a measure adhering to the strong sustainability paradigm sparked an ardent debate. This study explores its validity as a macroeconomic strong sustainability measure by applying the Sustainable Value approach to the EU-15 countries. Concretely, we assessed environmental, social and economic resources in combination with the GDP for all EU-15 countries from 1995 to 2006 for three benchmark alternatives. The results show that several countries manage to adequately delink resource use from GDP growth. Furthermore, the remarkable difference in outcome between the national and EU-15 benchmark indicates a possible inefficiency of the current allocation of national resource ceilings imposed by the European institutions. Additionally, by using an effects model we argue that the service degree of the economy and governmental expenditures on social protection and research and development are important determinants of overall resource efficiency. Finally, we sketch out three necessary conditions to link the Sustainable Value approach to the strong sustainability paradigm. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Being confronted with increasing and expanding urbanisation and the loss of natural green spaces, our living environment is threatened more and more by the effects of global climate change. Green infrastructure is often thought of as the solution to increase climate resilience and reinforce the quality of the lived environment simultaneously. While the benefits, or ecosystem services, that are generated through green infrastructure have been studied intensively, forces that influence green infrastructure decision-making have been far less subjected to thorough research. In this study a discrete choice experiment was conducted with local decision makers in Flemish municipalities to reveal crucial factors in the decision process applied to green infrastructure projects. Flanders is one of the most densely built regions in Europe, stressing the urgency to understand local spatial decision factors to guarantee green space. 568 decision makers active in the local administration of 235 Flemish municipalities participated in the experiment, set in a hypothetical neighbourhood park. Every choice alternative exists of five attributes: investment cost, maintenance cost, deferred investment, recreational value, and climate impact. We find that barriers hampering Flemish munipalities' GI implementation, differ over size of the municipality: smallers municipalities are more affected by knowledge gaps, while larger municipalities are experiencing prioritization issues. Results from hierarchical Bayes choice models indicate that municipal decisions on green infrastructure are highly – almost solely -cost-driven, rarely consider the full range of benefits, and centre around short-term and immediate arguments. Moreover, interaction models reveal that a municipalities' financial result is a key determinant of its willingness to invest in public greening and consider long term benefits, suggesting that GI is a luxury good. The results expose some of the heuristics in GI decision making and can be used to inform higher authorities on ways to overcome barriers towards informed decision-making and to facilitate GI investment.