As the largest developing country in the world, China creates a considerable quantity of municipal solid waste (MSW), which is one of the most serious urban pollution sources. Not only can MSW to energy contribute to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by landfills,...

The aim of this article is to report a comprehensive review of life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) implication on residential buildings. It discusses the contemporary issues, and its relationship and significance of system boundary, assumptions, and reports how it effects on...

This paper provides an extensive review of anaerobic digestion (AD) systems, with a specific focus on community scale digesters for urban applications, processing either municipal organic waste exclusively or as mix feed. Emphasis is placed on reducing the systems scale environmental impact of...

A recent study suggested that buildings globally consume up to 40% of energy and responsible for half of world greenhouse gas emission. Introducing life cycle assessment (LCA) to the building industry is important because it can measure every environmental impact involved in every process from...

The last decades, lowering the ecological impact of buildings is receiving increased attention by researchers, policy-makers and companies. Mostly the focus is on reducing energy consumption and the use of eco-friendly materials, but the concept of life-cycle thinking is growing in importance....

The aim of the current paper is to discuss the sustainability aspect of biorefinery systems with focus on biomass supply chains, processing of biomass feedstocks in biorefinery platforms and sustainability assessment methodologies. From the stand point of sustainability, it is important to...

The main objective of this study is to develop a methodology adapted to the prospective environmental evaluation of actions in the energy sector. It describes how a bottom-up long-term energy model can be used in a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework. The proposed methodology is applied in a...

Mathematical models have been widely used to simulate all aspects of bioenergy production systems including the growth kinetics of energy crops, conversion processes, production economics, supply logistics and environmental impacts. There is limited commercial experience to produce and process...

This paper examines the uncertainty of a new method – the macro life cycle assessment – to analyze the environmental impacts of public policies. The environmental impacts of two 2005–2025 European energy policies (a business as usual policy and a bioenergy policy) were comparatively...

Forest biomass is a renewable source that has the potential to substitute fossil fuels in many applications, from the generation of bioenergy (heat, electricity or transportation fuels) to the production of bioproducts (chemicals and other materials). The increased use of forest biomass could...