International benchmarking has played a key role in the reform of Australia's infrastructure industries by promoting indirect or yardstick competition, in highlighting the need for further reform and building a consensus for implementing necessary changes. The international benchmarking of...

A model of majority rule is developed in which each of a finite number of generations votes on a redistribution of income between itself and the other generations. In voting, each generation expresses tastes for its own income and for the distribution of income across generations. The model is...

Virtual water is the water required to produce food or a commodity, and includes rainwater in addition to irrigation and the water required to grow feed in livestock systems. Measuring virtual water is a useful concept in assessing water management as it permits the comparison of crops and...

Energy inputs are compared with biomass energy output for several sawtimber and woody biomass programs covering rotation ages from 2 to 120 yr. A consistent comparision with several published studies supports the hypothesis that the energy ratio ER (i.e. the ratio of energy out to energy in)...

To assess the effects of mass transfer and hydrogen pressure on the oil yield and quality from cellulosic biomass, fixed-bed pyrolysis (atmospheric pressure) and hydropyrolysis experiments at temperatures between 400 and 650°C have been conducted on sunflower bagasse and pure cellulose. The...

Quantitative simulations of the global-scale benefits of climate change mitigation are presented, using a harmonised, self-consistent approach based on a single set of climate change scenarios. The approach draws on a synthesis of output from both physically-based and economics-based models, and...