10th biennial emergy research conference schedule · 10th biennial emergy research conference...

10th BIENNIAL EMERGY RESEARCH CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

January 25 – 27, 2018

10th BIENNIAL EMERGY RESEARCH CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Thursday, January 25 The Chamber

7:45 Registration 8:15 Opening Remarks: Mark Brown

8:20 – 9:35 Session 1 - The Geobiosphere

8:20 Solar equivalences of the Earth’s primary exergy inflows and the theoretical basis for secondary and tertiary emergy flows of the geobiosphere: New calculations of transformities Daniel E. Campbell

8:45 Global empower, and Earth biome emergy signatures Dong Joo Lee, Mark Brown

9:10 Recent advances in computing unit emergy values of Earth minerals Mark Brown, Sergio Ulgiati

9:35 – 10:00 Break

10:00 - 12:05 Session 2 - Regional Development & Sustainability

10:00 Implementing a Circular Economy Framework in Campania Region (Italy) within an emergy perspective Remo Santagata, Gabriella Fiorentinoa, Amalia Zucaro, Maddalena Ripa, Xu Tian, Gengyuan Liu, Sergio Ulgiati

10:25 Transportation or public service: Understanding location quality of the Greater Philadelphia Region using e[m]ergy analysis

Jae Min Lee, William W. Braham, Evan Oskierko-Jeznacki, Dr. Barry Silverman, Dr. Nasrin Khansari

10:50 Multiple influences of land transfer in the integration of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in China Xiaobin Dong, Nachuan Lu, Hejie Wei, Weiguo Fan, Zihan Xu, Xuechao Wang, Kaixiong Xing, Silvio Viglia, Sergio Ulgiati

11:15 Peri-urbanization and urban land teleconnections in Taipei Metropolitan area: An emergy synthesis

Hao-Wei Chiu, Shu-Li Huang, Ya-Cheng Hsieh

11:40 Land teleconnection due to urban tourism: A case study of agricultural souvenir Ying-Chieh Lee, Pei-Ting Liao, Shu-Li Huang

12:05 - 13:20 Lunch (Note room change after lunch, to G310)

13:20 – 15:00 Session 3 – Advances in Methodology (Room G310)

13:20 Assessing the ‘embodied’ environmental support. The role of Emergy Accounting amidst other methods.

Marco Raugei, Sergio Ulgiati

13:45 On the development and information content of emergy indicators Simone Bastianoni, Daniel E. Campbell, Nadia Marchettini, Valentina Niccolucci and Federico M. Pulselli

14:10 Information and service in emergy analyses Tom Abel

14:35 Emergy, infrastructure and uncertainty – the effects of UEV uncertainty on the resource profile of the urban water system

Sam Arden

15:00 – 15:25 Break

15:25 – 17:30 Session 4 - Water Systems: Treatment, Restoration, Value (Room G310)

15:25 Emergy analysis of two submersed aquatic vegetation restoration techniques Elizabeth K. Zinecker, Patrick C. Kangas

15:50 Emergy of stream restoration Peter May, Elliott T. Campbell

16:15 A sustainability analysis of a constructed wetland wastewater treatment ecosystem in Tibet based on emergy Shoujuan Tang, Lixiao Zhang

16:40 Comparative emergy evaluation of nutrient removal and nutrient recovery technologies and the implications to nutrient management Ranjani B. Theregowda, Xin (Cissy) Ma, Jay Garland

17:05 Emergy accounting of fresh water from a domestic polygeneration system based on renewable sources

Amaya Martínez-Gracia, Alejandro del Amo, Mark T. Brown, Angel A Bayod-Rújula, Javier Uche, Sergio Usón, Luis E Acevedo, Fernando Círez

Please note, tomorrow we start at 8:20, we have 2 rooms of concurrent

sessions, then lunch, then one more session in The Chamber.

Friday, January 26 The Chamber & Room G310

(concurrent)

8:20 - 10:25 Session 5 - Industrial Systems (The Chamber)

8:20 The added value of Emergy Accounting for the performance assessment of industrial processes – The case of papermaking Fabiana Corcelli, Maddalena Ripa, Sergio Ulgiati

8:45 An emergy based approach for evaluating manufacturing process sustainability Amanda Bligh, Manbir Sodhi, Dan Campbell

9:10 Emergy analysis of a process of plasma driven deposition of organosilicon anti corrosion layers on galvanized steel based on life cycle inventory Antonino Marvuglia, Benedetto Rugani, Enrico Benetto

9:35 Emergy assessment of photovoltaic/thermal hybrid solar technology Angel A. Bayod-Rújula, Mark T. Brown, Amaya Martínez-Gracia, Alejandro Del Amo

10:00 Developing synergies between human and natural systems with emergy assessment Fabrizio Saladini, Varsha Gopalakrishnan, Simone Bastianoni, Bhavik Bakshi

8:20 - 10:25 Session 6 - Agricultural Systems (Room G310)

8:20 Sustainability evaluation of agricultural system in Dehua County based on emergy analysis

Huang Huang, Jin-e Liu, Hai-Rong Su, Guo-Xiang Wang

8:45 Comparison of locally grown grass-clover mixture with imported soybean meal for Danish pig feed

Andreas Kamp, Hanne Østergård

9:10 Yield and emergy analysis of organic urban agriculture in Sydney, Australia Robert McDougall

9:35 What can Emergy tell about food: the impact of diets – The Brazilian case Mariana Oliveira, Enrique Ortega, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz, Federico Pulselli, Simone Bastianoni

10:00 Food security in Lebanon: an environmental accounting framework Ludmila Skaf, Elvira Buonocore, Stefano Dumontet, Roberto Capone, Pier Paolo Franzese

10:25 - 10:50 Break


(concurrent)

10:50 – 12:30 Session 7 – Conceptual Frameworks (Chamber)

10:50 Emergy as a tool for an integrated knowledge Francesco Gonella, Silvio Cristiano, Sofia Spagnolo

11:15 IMM/CMI: Team-science in model-making as an essential part of emergy analysis for environmental systems Stuart Whipple, Bernard C. Patten

11:40 From a mechanistic approach describing nature to characteristic of self-organizing systems. Does it call for a new language? Torbjörn Rydberg

12:05 Toward the thermodynamics and emergy of picture and other puzzle solving Dennis Collins

10:50 – 12:30 Session 8 – Built Environment (G310)

10:50 The benefit of integrating emergy synthesis and LCA towards more comprehensive analysis of advanced building systems Naomi Keena, Marco Raugei, Anna Dyson

11:15 Conceptualizing craft and design in building construction through energy, structure and information

Ayodh Vasant Kamath

11:40 Emergy synthesis of urban form and CO2 emissions Po-Ju Huang, Shu-Li Huang

12:05 Emergy Expenditure among municipal wastewater treatment systems across the US

Ranjani B. Theregowda, Sam Arden, Xin (Cissy) Ma, Jay Garland

12:30 – 13:45 LUNCH

One more session after lunch in The Chamber

Friday, January 26 (The Chamber)

13:45 – 15:15 Session 9 - Systems Principles, Networks, Self-Organization

13:45 Isomorphic systems processes represented and not represented in

Odum’s General Systems Ecology Len Troncale

14:10 Emergy and efficiency analysis of historical bubbles Mark P.A. Ciotola

14:35 Emergy minimization in ecosystems and the biosphere: Network relational elements self-organize to generate maximum power per unit of boundary energy–matter inputs

Bernard C. Patten

15:00 Self-Organizing Systems, when modeled according to the Maximum Ordinality Principle, always present explicit formal solutions, in their Proper Time and Proper Space

Corrado Giannantoni

16:00 Poster presenters, please arrive at Ustler Hall* for set up at 16:00

16:30 – 21:00 Poster Session & Dinner Reception at Ustler Hall*, hosted by the Center for Environmental Policy

*You can find maps at the end of this program and on the website.

POSTERS

Emergy evaluation of the intertidal kelp, Lessonia berteroana: Implications for fisheries management Fernando A. Berrios Robles, Daniel E. Campbell

Calculating the wind energy input to a system using a spatially explicit method that considers atmospheric stability Daniel E. Campbell , Michael Charpentier

Emergy evaluation of the United States, U.S. Education, Educational Attainment and the National Financial System from 1950 through 2016 Daniel E. Campbell , Henry A. Walker, Hongfang Lu

When systemic sustainability is an everyday struggle: an Emergy-based analysis of a Dog Shelter

Francesco Gonella, Giordano Brocca, Silvio Cristiano, Nicole Khoury, Giovanna Salmistraro, Sofia Spagnolo

Care before business: on the potential of emergy analysis to address the sustainability of not-for-profit systems Silvio Cristiano, Francesco Gonella, Emanuele Nannini, Sofia Spagnolo

Relationship between emergy input and benthic community structure of tidal flat wcosystems in Korea Naryeong Kim, Daeseok Kang, Jongseong Ryu

Can we learn from the Kogi? Eric Lee

Do Emergy Yield Ratios matter? Eric Lee

Energy activism Sue Lee

Emergy-based Sustainability Assessment of Geum River Watershed in Korea

Seungjun Lee

Towards an emergy-based labeling system as a mean to characterize and valorize agriproducts

Matteo Maccanti, Giulia Goffetti, Elena Neri, Mariana Oliveira, Riccardo M. Pulselli, Simone Bastianoni

Emergy analysis of agricultural systems in a water basin to know their influence on water infiltration

Mariana Oliveira, Enrique Ortega, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz, Thais Yaguti

Emergy folio for agroecological systems analysis

Enrique Ortega, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz, Mariana Oliveira, Thais Yaguti

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Part 1: Methods framework and data sources

Jiamin Pan, Gengyuan Liu, Xueqi Wang, Hao Zhang, Sharlynn Sweeney, Sergio Ulgiati, Mark T. Brown

The eco-economical evaluation of tidal flat restoration in Suncheon Bay Naae Park, Suk Mo Lee

Integrating emergy accounting and marine spatial planning to assess natural capital in a Mediterranean protected area

Flavio Picone, Buonocore E., D’Agostaro R., Donati S., Chemello R., Franzese P.P

Are net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs) more sustainable? Eco-systemic analysis and discussions on building sustainability through a case study of a solar-powered low-energy house Kaveh Samiei, Hwang Yi

Toward transformity of Christian or other advanced religion follower David Scienceman, Dennis Collins

Emergy and Life Cycle-based analyses of energy production systems: Preliminary study of a biogas power plant

Sofia Spagnolo, Gianpietro Chinellato, Silvio Cristiano, Francesco Gonella, Antonino Marvuglia, Elena Semenzin, Alex Zabeo

Assessment of ecosystem services value of Liaohe Estuarine Wetland based on Emergy Theory Fangli Su, Lifeng LI, Mark T. Brown, Haisheng Liu, Tieliang Wang

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Part 3: Enhancing the sustainability narrative through a deeper understanding of indicators correlation

Xueqi Wang, Gengyuan Liu, Jiamin Pan, Hao Zhang, Sharlynn Sweeney, Sergio Ulgiati, Mark T. Brown

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Part 2: Environmental cccounting of national economic system from 2000-2015

Hao Zhang, Gengyuan Liu, Jiamin Pan, Xueqi Wang, Sharlynn Sweeney, Sergio Ulgiati, Mark T. Brown

Emergy analysis for the floodplain of the Lower Yellow River intercepted by the Xianglangdi dam construction

Xiangping Zhang, Yuanjian Wang, Shimin Tian, Enhui Jiang

Saturday, January 27, 2018 (The Chamber)

8:20 - 10:00 Session 10 - Ecosystem Services

8:20 Spatial comparison of the biophysical, emergy, emergy-monetary equivalence, and economic values of ecosystem services in Maryland

Elliott Campbell

8:45 Natural capital and ecosystem services assessment in marine ecosystems using emergy accounting Pier Paolo Franzese, Elvira Buonocore, Flavio Picone, Giovanni F. Russo

9:10 Using emergy to evaluate biodiversity Ana Carolina Valerio Nadalini

9:35 Development of a new principle framework for non-monetary accounting of ecosystem services Qing Yang, Gengyuan Liu, Marco Casazza, Biagio F. Giannetti

10:00 – 10:25 Break

10:25 – 12:30 Session 11 - Nations & International Trade

10:25 Emergy based analysis of China’s energy supply security Hongfang Lu, Hongxiao Liu, Jun Wang, Daniel E. Campbell, Hai Ren

10:50 Regional disparities in the Chinese Economy. An emergy evaluation of provincial international trade. Tian Xu, Yong Geng, Silvio Viglia, Raimund Bleischwitz, Elvira Buonocore, Sergio Ulgiati

11:15 Urban Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Indicator in Taiwan: An emergy approach

Ying-Chen Lin, Pei-Te Chiueh, Shang-Lien Lo

11:40 Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Gengyuan Liu, Jiamin Pan, Xueqi Wang, Hao Zhang, Sharlynn Sweeney, Sergio Ulgiati, Mark T. Brown

12:05 The SDGs initiative and the emergy viewpoint Federico M. Pulselli, Massimo Gigliotti, Luca Coscieme, Nicoletta Patrizi, Michela Marchi and Simone Bastianoni

12:30 – 14:30 Working lunch / Meeting of the International Society

for the Advancement of Emergy Research (ISAER) Lunch provided by ISAER

18:00 – 23:00 Party at Mark Brown and Carol Binello’s House

Thursday, Jan 25, Session 1

ABSTRACTS

Thursday, January 25, 2018

8:20 - 10:00 Session 1: Geobiospheric Flows

Solar equivalences of the Earth’s primary exergy inflows and the theoretical basis for secondary and tertiary emergy flows of the

geobiosphere: New calculations of transformities

Daniel E. Campbell

USEPA, Office of Research & Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division, Narragansett

Brown et al. (2016) published a synthesis paper in which evidence was presented supporting a new value of the Earth’s geobiosphere baseline, 12.0E+24 seJ/y (solar equivalent joules per year) from which the emergy of all the Earth’s products and processes can be calculated. This value for the planetary baseline was further reinforced by adding the direct input of magma from the mantle to the Earth’s surface augmenting the baseline calculations in Campbell (2016). Also, Brown and Ulgiati (2016) published a paper giving transformities for the secondary and tertiary planetary exergy flows based on the new baseline. In this study the theoretical basis for their calculations of the transformities of the exergy flows within the hydrological cycle is reexamined and alternative formulations are proposed that are more consistent with observations of the world’s hydrological cycle and the emergy required to support its flows. In addition, several models for calculating the transformity of the wind are presented and the transformities of the exergy of waves and wind-driven currents that are the tertiary flows derived from the wind are also calculated. This study, (1) reexamines and refines the data given in Campbell (2016) further supporting the agreed upon value of the solar equivalent exergy, SEE, baseline of the Earth’s geobiosphere; (2) proposes new solar equivalence ratios, SERs, for tidal exergy dissipated in the oceans and the Earth’s deep heat flow based on the refined baseline line and Campbell (2016); (3) presents theoretical models for calculating the secondary and tertiary emergy flows of the geobiosphere; (4) carries out new calculations of the transformities of the Earth’s secondary and tertiary emergy flows and (5) examines a possible way forward for insuring self-consistency in future emergy evaluations.


Global empower, and Earth biome emergy signatures

Dong Joo Lee, Mark T. Brown

Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida

Using ArcGIS and NASA satellite data and other global coverages we develop 1 degree resolution global scale raster coverages of the annual exergy flux of the tripartite (solar, tide, and geothermal) and secondary sources driving the geobiosphere. Using UEVs from Brown et al (2016) and Brown and Ulgiati (2016) we compute empower coverages of each exergy flux and then combined with a coverage of Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (Olson et al 2001), we compute empower and areal empower intensity (AEI) of seventeen Earth biomes (including the ocean). Further, we compute UEVs for biome above ground biomass and soil carbon. Emergy signatures of the biomes show that rainfall and wind are the dominate emergy source for 15 of the seventeen biomes (tropical/subtropical moist forest, tropical/subtropical dry forest, tropical/subtropical coniferous forest, temperate mixed forests, temperate coniferous forests, boreal forests, tropical/subtropical grasslands, temperate grasslands, montaine grasslands, tundra, deserts, and rock & ice), river geopotential is the dominate source in flooded grasslands and savannas, and the tripartite (sum of Solar, geothermal, and tide) is the dominate emergy in the ocean. We analyze the relation between net primary production and above ground biomass with driving emergy using simple linear regression and find that about 70% of the variability in biomass vs AEI is explained by the linear model while only about 50% of variability in NPP vs AEI is explained.

Recent advances in computing unit emergy values of Earth minerals

Mark T. Brown1, Sergio Ulgiati2

1 Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida 2 Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples

The empower that is derived from solar energy, tidal momentum and geothermal energy drives the productive processes of the geobiosphere. A main open question is how to evaluate the emergy required to produce the mineral resources used by humans in all productive processes. In this talk we review past methods used to evaluate mineral UEVs, their assumptions, computations, and resulting Unit Emergy Values (UEVs). We then propose a method of accounting based on previous work by Szargut et al. (1988), Valerio, (2008), Valero et al, (2010,2011), De Vilbiss and Brown (2015), and De Vilbiss (2017). Computations are based on the Gibb’s (crustal average) transformity of each mineral (the ratio of average crustal specific emergy to the mineral’s free energy at average abundance in the crust) and the mineral’s mixing exergy (the difference in free energy between the mine concentration of the mineral and its average crustal concentration). The product of a mineral’s mixing exergy and its Gibbs transformity is a mineral’s specific emergy at mine concentrations. Finally we apply these new UEVs to an emergy evaluation of global resource flows supporting the geobiosphere including humanity.


10:00 - 12:05 Session 2: Regional Development & Sustainability

Implementing a Circular Economy Framework in Campania Region (Italy) within an emergy perspective

Remo Santagata1, Gabriella Fiorentinoa1, Amalia Zucaro1, Maddalena Ripa2, Xu Tian3, Gengyuan Liu4, Sergio Ulgiati1,4

1Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples 2Inst. of Environmental Sci. and Technology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

3School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. 4School of Environment, Beijing Normal University

Circular Economy (CE) Frameworks are getting increasing attention with regard to their implementation in agricultural, urban and industrial sectors as an innovative business model to optimize resource use, process performances and development policies. However, conventional biophysical and economic indicators hardly fit CE characteristics. Life cycle assessment, footprint and economic cost-benefit indicators, do not fully capture the specificity of a closed loop CE framework, characterized by feedbacks and resource use minimization and quality assessment. Commonly used monodimensional indicators seem unable to successfully relate the process performance and the use of ecosystem services and natural capital, in that they do not assess the environmental quality and sustainability (renewability, fit to use, recycle potential) of resources and the complexity of interaction between agro/industrial/urban environments and socioeconomic systems, and translate into an incomplete and inadequate picture, far from an effective CE perspective. In this study, Emergy Accounting is used to address the need for an improved approach to CE systemic aspects, identifying a set of environmental accounting indices and ratios capable of capturing both resource generation (upstream), product (downstream) and systems dimensions. This scheme will be built around the case study of Campania region's economy, i.e. the metropolitan city of Naples and the surrounding agro-industrial area with its smaller urban settlements. In order to design a reasonable and reliable CE framework, already implemented processes as well as innovative processes will be analysed and discussed, within a bottom-up procedure capable to generate a suitable starting point for CE development (i. e., conversion of waste cooking oil into biodiesel, conversion of slaughterhouse residues to power and chemicals, recycle of electronic waste, recycle of building materials into the urban infrastructures, recovery and conversion of agro-waste residues, amongst others). Although the environmental performances of some of these processes have already been investigated, a comprehensive CE emergy assessment at a larger scale has never been performed. The emergy assessment method is capable to highlight the advantages of circular economy, by means of already developed and brand new sets of emergy-based indicators.


Transportation or public service: Understanding location quality of the

Greater Philadelphia Region using e[m]ergy analysis

Jae Min Lee1, William W. Braham1, Evan Oskierko-Jeznacki1, Dr. Barry Silverman2, Dr. Nasrin Khansari2

1Center for Environmental Building & Design, University of Pennsylvania 2Ackoff Collaboratory, University of Pennsylvania

This study explores the locational and socio-economic quality of local communities by comparing e[m]ergy inflow and asset in Census Tract of Delaware River Valley Region to understand the factors contributing to current settlement pattern in the region. Understanding the dynamic how human settlement self-organizes has been the key question for urban scholars. Conventional theory in organizing human settlement focused on the dynamics between travel distance and land price which created a series of concentric rings suitable for different land uses (Christaller and Baskin, 1966; von Thünen and Hall, 1966). This is true to the physical layout of cities. However, others argued the irregular patches of different neighborhood characteristics are the result of individual choices; the dynamic between people’s budget and the level of public service from local governments. Therefore, people sort themselves out by their socio-economic status (Tiebout, 1956). E[m]ergy study presents potentials to help to understand such phenomenon because it is a unique accounting method that can directly compare inflow of e[m]ergy and accumulated e[m]ergy asset. Transportation can be represented as annual e[m]ergy inflow, which can be accounted as the total amount of fuel and electricity used to move people around. On the other hand, public service and neighborhood characteristics are more complex to be represented because these are accumulated over time. Level of education, wealth, infrastructure, and locational characteristics are stored e[m]ergy. Evaluating location and socio-economic quality of communities have been introduced to e[m]ergy study (Braham, 2016; Braham et al., 2017). We expand the previous studies and focus on the locational and socio-economic quality of local communities by comparing inflow and asset in Census Tract of Delaware River Valley Region. Annual e[m]ergy inflow will be estimated from American Community Survey 2010 and the Green House Gas Report 2010 by Delaware River Valley Regional Planning Commission. The municipal property tax will be estimated from county tax records. Infrastructure assets including roads and public service will be estimated by square-foot basis approach (Lee & Braham, 2017).

Braham, W. W., 2016. Architecture and systems ecology: thermodynamic principles of environmental building design, in three parts. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2016.; Braham, W.W., E. Oskierko-Jeznacki, J. M. Lee, B.Silverman, N. Khansari . 2017. City Building: Concentration of Urban Assets in the Philadelphia Region. Biennial Int’l Workshop Advanced Energy Studies (BIWAES 2017); Christaller, W. & C. W. Baskin. 1966. Central Places in Southern Germany. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.; Lee, J. M. & Braham, W. W. 2017. Building emergy analysis of Manhattan: Density parameters for high density and high-rise developments. Ecol. Mod., 363, 157–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.08.014; von Thunen, J. H., & P. G. Hall. 1966. Isolated State [English edition of Der isolierte Staat (1826)]. New York: Pergamon Press.; Tiebout, C. M. 1956. A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy, 64, 416–424.


Multiple influences of land transfer in the integration of Beijing-

Tianjin-Hebei region in China Xiaobin Dong1,2, Nachuan Lu1,2, Hejie Wei1,2, Weiguo Fan1,2, Zihan Xu1,2,

Xuechao Wang1,2, Kaixiong Xing1,2, Silvio Viglia3, Sergio Ulgiati3,4

1State Key Lab. of Earth Surface Processes & Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal Univ. 2College of Resources Sci. & Tech., Faculty of Geographical Sci., Beijing Normal Univ.

3Dept. of Sciences and Technologies, Parthenope University, Naples 4School of Environment, Beijing Normal University

Land transfers are an important approach to Chinese farmland management and intensive crop production as well as a primary government strategy to promote Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region development; these transfers are expected not only to generate social, economic, and ecological benefits but also to further Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei’s regional development by means of more efficient and sustainable resource use. However, together with the challenges associated with this process, several contradictions and problems have arisen that are now critical political and social concerns. Therefore, a modern demonstration zone of sustainable agriculture in Yi County, Hebei Province, China, was selected as a case study for emergy-based performance and sustainability evaluation of the associated social, economic, and ecological benefits before and after land transfer. The results indicate that land transfers have induced fundamental changes to land use, which led to improved performance in terms of resource use and sustainability indicators (based on the emergy approach) and have produced significant ecological, economic, and social benefits. Therefore, land transfers proved to be an effective means to support sustainable and coordinated development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region when considering their contribution to improvements in the three benefit categories. This research indicates that the land transfer model is worth expanding to promote sustainable development in rural areas. However, the emergy results, while highlighting the achieved or potential benefits, also indicate that local improvements cannot be fully achieved if the entire supply chain of goods and resources is not suitably improved as well and that the local system is heavily affected by the larger-scale functioning of the economy as a whole, such that all links across scales need to be monitored and carefully addressed.

Peri-urbanization and urban land teleconnections in Taipei Metropolitan area: An emergy synthesis

Hao-Wei Chiu, Shu-Li Huang, Ya-Cheng Hsieh

Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University

Urbanization not only caused the environmental change in its metropolitan region but also influence the environmental and socioeconomic changes of distant land areas due to increasing demands on resources use and waste emissions. Previous studies on the assessment of urban system only limited to the area being studied. There is a need to incorporate land teleconnection to study the relationship between a city and distant land areas during the process


of urbanization. The aim of this paper is to analyze the teleconnection of energy and material flows between Taipei’s peri-urbanization and remote areas in Taiwan. The emergy synthesis of Taipei and Taiwan were analyzed first to investigate the relationships of material and energy flows between Taipei and Taiwan. The exploitation of non-renewable resources in Taiwan during the 1990s was driven mainly by Taipei’s development. Furthermore, compared with Taiwan, Taipei area highly relies on external resources. The result of emergy evaluation of materials flows due to peri-urbanization in Taipei indicated that the construction of flood control projects was the major reason of material inflow of construction materials from remote areas. The emergy inflows of construction materials of major infrastructure and buildings in Taipei peaked during the 1990s. In the 2010s, the emergy of infrastructure maintenance and building renewal are the primary cause for material inflow. The results of emergy synthesis indicated that there exists teleconnection between Taipei and other distal areas in Taiwan due to peri-urbanization in Taipei. Bilateral relationships of energy and material flows between Taipei and distal sites will be further analyzed.

Land teleconnection due to urban tourism: A case study of agricultural souvenir

Ying-Chieh Lee1, Pei-Ting2 Liao, Shu-Li Huang2

1Lee-Ming Institute of Technology, Taishan, Taiwan 2Graduate Inst. of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, Sanshia, Taiwan

Land teleconnection is a newly proposed concept in the research fields of land system science. Due to the increase of resources usages and waste emissions along with urban consumptions, the process of urban activities not only affects the sustainability of urban itself but also affects the land use and land cover, and industrial structure of distant land area. Tourism in Taiwan is one of the major industries and contributor to the economy of Taiwan. In 2016, Taiwan received more than 10.6 million inbound visitors, a sharp increase from 3.5 million inbound visitors in 2006. These inbound visitors temporarily stay in the city not only use urban facilities but also induce more resources (e.g. food, souvenirs or other nonrenewable resources) inflow from distant land area through tourist consumption. Pineapple cake, made from local pineapples or a mix of pineapple and winter melon, is the most popular agricultural souvenir item in Taiwan, especially in Taipei. However, pineapples are only grown in the middle and southern Taiwan because of the requirement of warmer temperatures. In the other words, the more pineapple cake consumed in Taipei, the more lands are converted to pineapple farms in the middle and southern Taiwan. The purpose of this research is to analyze the land teleconnection relationship between Taipei and distant land area from the perspective of agricultural souvenirs by using emergy synthesis. And also rethink whether Taiwan gains any benefit or loses emergy by selling tourists pineapple cakes.


13:20 – 15:00 Session 3 – Advances in Methodology (Room G310)

Assessing the ‘embodied’ environmental support. The role of Emergy Accounting amidst other methods.

Marco Raugei1, Sergio Ulgiati2

1 Faculty of Technology, Design & Environment, Oxford Brookes University, UK 2 Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy

Over the course of several decades, a number of methodological approaches have been developed to assess the total (i.e., direct as well as indirect) requirement for primary energy and natural resources associated to a wide range of human-dominated activities, among which: Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Ecological Footprint (EF), Extended Exergy Analysis (EXA), and Emergy Accounting (EMA). Despite a fundamental commonality of aim, most of these efforts have been made independently of one another, and over different space and time brackets, which has resulted in a general lack of oversight on their respective strengths and weaknesses. Also, the few isolated attempts to compare and contrast these methods have almost invariably degenerated into a simplistic and misguided ‘which is better’ type of debate, instead of fostering a reasoned discussion of the specific fields and scales where their respective application is more warranted. Instead, it is our view that different assessment methods have their place and reason to co-exist, and that the selection of which one(s) to employ should stem from more attention being focused on which research questions are actually more relevant in relation to specific case studies. This paper aims at providing a much-needed reflection on this very central issue, and discusses a few token application examples for illustrative purposes. As far as EMA is concerned, this is intended to help identify its specificity and value for selected applications (e.g., natural capital and ecosystem services, environmental policy making, trade equity, etc.) for which other methods may not be equally suitable.

On the development and information content of emergy indicators

Simone Bastianoni1, Daniel E. Campbell2, Nadia Marchettini1, Valentina Niccolucci1, Federico M. Pulselli1

1Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena 2USEPA, Office of Research & Dev, National Health & Environmental Effects

Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division

Since the very beginning of the application of emergy methods to systems analysis, the search for indicators and indices capable of characterizing particular systems properties began. Especially, the distinction between renewable and non-renewable emergy and local vs. exogenous inputs have characterized the


development of emergy indicators. Since 2002, there has been a constant growth of “new” indicators, some of which have added new insight, but quite often the new indicators have added no insight to the analysis or have been misinterpreted and applied incorrectly in subsequent studies. In this paper, we go back to the roots of the development of emergy indicators and provide a critical review of the kind of information that different types of indicators can provide: [emergy]/[emergy]; [emergy]/[output]; [emergy]/[input]; etc. The concept of non-renewability will be considered in depth, since it can be either “structural” or “accidental”. For example, what is the difference between depleting a stock of fish with a renewable energy fueled boat vs. harvesting a sustainable amount of a fish stock with a fossil fuel driven boat? According to emergy indicators like the Environmental Loading Ratio and the %renewability the two might have the same result. We argue that they are not the same as systems, since the former is structurally nonrenewable while the latter is accidentally nonrenewable (i.e., the fishing boat could be replaced with one fueled only with renewable inputs). The same happens for electricity production: the thermoelectric plant powered by fossil fuels is structurally nonrenewable, regardless of the amount of renewable water added to the production process.

Information and service in emergy analyses

Tom Abel

Human Development, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan As the interest of emergy researchers has in recent years been attracted to the evaluation of manufacturing processes, several issues have come to the fore. One is the input of human work and knowledge, or ‘services’, into a process. Another is the input of the accumulated legacy of shared knowledge or culture. A third is the controlling input of ‘communication’ from multiples sources in the information production hierarchy. Confusion begins with knowing what exactly is being evaluated. More confusion comes with quantification. At times, these three inputs are confused with each other. A fourth source of confusion is the accounting term, ‘services.’ Theories of information and emergy are complex and intimidating for researchers whose major interest and background is in engineering or manufacturing. No clear guidelines have been produced to aid emergy researchers regarding these somewhat daunting issues. Emergy researchers want a procedure to incorporate ‘information’ into their analyses. How can information be quantified? What theory and methods should apply? This paper will attempt to fill that need, to offer guidelines that address together labor and information in emergy analyses.


Emergy, infrastructure and uncertainty – the effects of UEV uncertainty on the resource profile of the urban water system

Sam Arden

Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida

The ability to quantify the full environmental cost of disparate products or services using a single, thermodynamically based metric is a fundamental strength of the emergy methodology. Not only does this allow for the straightforward comparison of the resource use efficiency of competing alternative processes, it allows for useful contextualization within the larger support system. However, despite considerable methodological progress, a sometimes high degree of uncertainty remains owing to the difficulty of accurately characterizing the contribution of complex, long term biophysical processes to product or service formation. For example, recent work has suggested that Unit Emergy Values (UEV) for metals and minerals may be overestimated, which could have cascading effects on UEV calculation for higher level products or services. In this study, we explore the consequences of the current methodological reality that for most products or services – particularly for commonly used ones like concrete, steel, electricity, etc. – there exist a range of estimations for its specific UEV. Using recent work performed to characterize the resource profiles of existing and future urban water components and configurations, we use a Monte Carlo approach to generate a distribution of emergy values for these same inventories. We then discuss the implications for the robustness of conclusions that can be drawn from using a static UEV library alone.


15:25 – 17:30 Session 4 - Water Systems: Treatment,

Restoration, Value

Emergy analysis of two submersed aquatic vegetation restoration techniques

Elizabeth K. Zinecker, Patrick C. Kangas

MEES Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

An emergy analysis was performed to assess two submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) restoration methods for P. perfoliatus (redhead grass). Restoration of P. perfoliatus both in Chesapeake Bay and elsewhere has been problematic because it does not effectively regenerate after disturbance/removal. In this conceptual study, a method of propagating and transplanting sods of P. perfoliatus was compared with a recently developed method of transplanting a biodegradable pot filled with seeds and inoculant at restoration sites. Propagules were the largest input for the sod method (purchased labor and materials: 57.5% of the annual emergy), while for the pot/seed transplant system the largest input was renewable river geopotential (41%). The renewable fraction (ΦR) of the sod vs. pot/seed method was lower (7.24% vs. 44%). The transformities of the sod and pot/seed methods were 1.43E+13 and 1.04E+11 respectively. Emergy yield ratios were 1.08 for sod transplanting and 1.71 for the seed/pot transplant system, indicating high, nonrenewable inputs for each system. Sods had a much higher loading ratio (ELR) 12.8 vs. 1.4 for pots/seeds. The emergy sustainability index (ESI) of sods was 0.084, which was 93% less sustainable than the pot/seed technique. Given that the pot/seed technique had the potential to restore 97% more SAV habitat than the sods method, a pilot restoration is recommended to further investigate field performance and yield of the biodegradable pot/seed transplant system.

Emergy of stream restoration

Peter May1, Elliott T. Campbell2

1Biohabitats, Inc. and University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 2Maryland Department of Natural Resources

The ecologically engineered restoration of stream systems has advanced significantly as an accepted practice and approach in recent decades. Stream restoration has often been required or an option for environmental impact mitigation or for the protection of infrastructure or property. US EPA enforcement of Clean Water Act designated Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) of nutrients and sediment to impaired waterbodies has created a new mechanism for state and local government funding of stream restoration projects. Measured in linear feet of stream restored, projects often target active


bank erosion, streambed entrenchment, sewer and water or road and bridge infrastructure protection. New TMDL regulations give credit to stream restoration projects for nutrient and sediment load reductions. Increasingly, restoration projects have begun to include designs that support naturalized fish passage, groundwater recharge, stormflow floodplain access, as well as diversified riparian and instream aquatic planting plans supporting wildlife. In an effort to quantify the relative value of stream restoration’s anticipated boost to other ecosystem services as well as water quality improvement, emergy analysis is applied to numerous design/build restoration projects in the Baltimore, Maryland - Washington, D.C. region. Results are presented that quantify the emergy flows of restoration design and construction efforts and the projected ecological and societal benefits of stream restoration accumulated over time. This allows us to evaluate the net benefit of stream restoration.

A sustainability analysis of a constructed wetland wastewater treatment ecosystem in Tibet based on emergy

Shoujuan Tang, Lixiao Zhang

State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University

In recent years, the Lhasa River has been seriously threatened by pollution due to the soaring increase of untreated municipal sewage from it surrounding towns in Tibet. While the conventional wastewater treatment facilities in that region cannot function properly. Accordingly, there is a great need for environment-friendly and inexpensive wastewater treatment system that does not require intensive management and is not high-tech. So, constructed wetland (CW) as a kind of ecological engineering to treat wastewater is an option. This study emphasizes the valuable nutrients in the sewage as a renewable resource (R) input for the CW and uses a novel perspective to account the portion of the emergy was derived from the wastewater itself. Meanwhile, we examines and evaluates, by using emergy synthesis, the environmental performance and system sustainability for Maizhokunggar free water surface constructed wetland (FWS-CW) wastewater treatment in Tibet. Moreover, we carries out some indices comparison with Beijing Longdao River vertical subsurface-flow constructed wetland (VSF-CW). The environmental loading ratios (ELR) are 6.69 for Maizhokunggar FWS-CW and 8.35 for Longdao River VSF-CW, the emergy sustainability index (ESI) of these two systems are 0.23 and 0.15, respectively. Results point out the environmental pressure of Maizhokunggar FWS-CW is smaller than Longdao River VSF-CW although its construction cost is higher because of the additional construction of solar house. On the basis of the delicate design in accordance with the local climate conditions of Tibet, Maizhokunggar FWS-CW can serve as a demonstration ecological sewage treatment engineering reducing local environmental stress.


Comparative emergy evaluation of nutrient removal and nutrient

recovery technologies and the implications to nutrient management

Ranjani B. Theregowda1,2, Xin (Cissy) Ma2, Jay Garland3

1 National Research Council Research Fellow 2 Water Systems Division, National Risk Management Research Laboratory,

USEPA, Cincinnati, Ohio 3 Systems Exposure Division, National Exposure Research Laboratory, USEPA,

Cincinnati, Ohio

Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) nutrient discharge regulations are becoming more stringent with increased environmental impacts, especially in surface water bodies. Many wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have been equipped with the necessary nutrient removal technologies to meet their effluent discharge permits. Though these processes can remove nutrients to very low levels, the treatment costs rise tremendously burdening WWTPs for capacity expansion, increased capital investment and operational expenditure. In the past decade or so, in a parallel effort, nutrient recovery technologies have demonstrated the potential benefits in recovering nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater as fertilizers. These recovery technologies not only fulfill the long-terms goals of compliance with nutrient discharge limits, provides WWTPs a revenue source, but also alleviates the resource scarcity such as depleting P reserve and improves sustainability and resilience of the communities. In order to have a deeper understanding of these technologies in terms of sustainability and holistic system consideration, this study compares different levels of nutrient removal (Chemical addition with - Modified Ludzack-Ettinger or Bardenpho or Modified University of Cape Town Processes with added Filtration or Osmosis) and nutrient recovery technologies (Struvite precipitation using proprietary techniques and added N reduction processes) by using emergy as a sustainability metric tool. The study will address 1) how the regulatory rules drive the system changes; 2) how the conventional system is transitioned to more cost effective more sustainable alternatives in nutrient management. The results shed some lights on various nutrient management options, the corresponding system energy expenditure, and how to achieve overall system efficiency and optimize trade-offs of treatment options.


Emergy accounting of fresh water from a domestic polygeneration system based on renewable sources

Amaya Martínez-Gracia*1, Alejandro del Amo2, Angel A Bayod-Rújula 3, Javier Uche1, Sergio Usón1, Luis E Acevedo4, Fernando Círez4

1 CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Zaragoza. Spain

2 Abora Solar S.L. Advanced solar energy, Spain 3 CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Zaragoza, Spain

4CIRCE Foundation, Spain

The current challenge concerning fresh water provision in water-scarce areas resides in making desalination technologies feed by renewable energies efficient and competitive in comparison with traditional methods (water transfers, desalination using fossil fuels or just water transport).

Polygeneration systems are a way to provide the energy and water with more advantages than individual conventional systems. Their main benefit is the primary energy saving due to their higher overall efficiencies, which could be even increased with integrated renewable systems and their associated reduction of greenhouse gases emissions. Furthermore, dependency and losses of power and water grids are considerably reduced, contributing to the distributed generation initiatives.

Emergy theory provides the guidelines for assessing the value of water resources and energy as a function of their origin and quality. From this perspective, the sustainability of a water system can be assessed according to the products, services, and energy necessary for its construction and operation within the corresponding socioeconomic system.

In this work, a trigeneration system providing electricity by coupling photovoltaic/thermal collectors and a wind turbine, sanitary hot water (SHW) coming from the PVT and evacuated tube collectors and fresh water (FW) produced in two seawater desalting facilities (membrane distillation, MD, and reverse osmosis, RO) is presented and analyzed. It is a lab-scale pilot plant located in a research facility in Zaragoza (Spain). A dynamic model in Trnsys has been developed and validated.

The results of assessing the emergy value of fresh water generated in the desalination units are studied and presented in this paper. They are compared with other reference values found in the literature for different water origins.

Friday, Jan 26, Session 5


8:20 - 10:25 Session 5 - Industrial Systems (The Chamber)

The added value of Emergy Accounting for the performance

assessment of industrial processes – The case of papermaking

Fabiana Corcelli1, Maddalena Ripa2, Sergio Ulgiati1

1Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy 2Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous

University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain

Industry has an important role in the economy because it provides energy and products to society, even though this requires large amounts of economic and environmental resources. A sustainability perspective of an industrial process should rely on a wider and holistic viewpoint, properly including all direct and indirect interactions with the environment. The Emergy Accounting method (EMA), thanks to its ability to address the multidimensional aspects of complex environmental and human-dominated processes, provides a valuable and complementary monitoring and management tool, to improve the interplay of strictly interlinked environmental and industrial systems. The main goal of this study is to show the added value of the EMA approach when dealing with an industrial production process. In particular, the pulp and paper industry was considered as an example of case study due to the increasing concern for the environmental costs of the whole papermaking process. Indeed, this sector constitutes one of the largest industry segments in the world in term of water, chemicals and energy usage. Several studies concerning environmental impacts, eco-efficiency, and cleaner technologies in the pulp and paper sector have already been carried out, but none of them addressed resource quality and resource generation costs from a supply-side point of view. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by highlighting the direct and indirect contribution in terms of natural capital and ecosystem services to the pulp and paper production process. The achieved research results are a valuable source of information for decision makers at both company and national levels, required to improve the environmental performance and management of paper production.


An emergy based approach for evaluating manufacturing process

sustainability Amanda Bligh1, Manbir Sodhi1, Dan Campbell2

1Dept. of Mechanical, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Univ. of Rhode Island 2USEPA, Office of Research & Development, National Health and Environmental

Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division, Narragansett, RI

Early in the product development process the design space is most open and quick feedback on alternate designs gives the opportunity to explore promising directions with less downstream impact. There are many commercial products and common engineering techniques for measuring the cost and manufacturing impacts involved in a given design. In spite of considerable effort at encouraging eco-design and sustainability to be part of the early evaluations, the tools available to engineers making these decisions require substantial environmental knowledge, limiting the ease-of-use and adoption. Evaluations of product sustainability are mostly limited to LCA analyses, which are database specific, and results often vary with the expertise of the evaluator. In this paper a framework is proposed for using emergy as a single metric for evaluating the environmental impact of a part's design based on an emergy accounting of its manufacturing process, with the structure based on the inputs used for product costing. An example is outlined and a set of possible use cases is discussed.

Emergy analysis of a process of plasma driven deposition of

organosilicon anti corrosion layers on galvanized steel based on life cycle inventory

Antonino Marvuglia, Benedetto Rugani, Enrico Benetto

Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Environmental Research and Innovation Department, Belvaux, Luxembourg

Plasma polymerised hexamethyldisiloxane (ppHMDSO) is a technology that does not generate toxic effluents for the deposition of thin protective coatings, in particular for anticorrosion treatment of galvanized steel sheets. In this work we perform an Emergy Analysis (EMA) of the process of an atmospheric ppHMDSO coating using the emergy software calculation SCALEM®, which performs emergy calculation using the technology matrix of the system in the form of the life cycle inventory (LCI) and applying the emergy algebra rules via the track summing method. Given the high number of interconnected processes constituting LCI matrices, the track summing method is implemented in SCALEM® using a graph search algorithm (each process is seen as a node). The calculation was performed for 1 m2 of coated steel surface (chosen functional unit). The calculation run in less than 7 minutes on laptop with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M CPU with 2.80GHz and 12.0 GB RAM, during which the algorithm visited 1756 nodes. The calculated emergy of the functional unit resulted related mostly to non-renewable, mineral resources. The case study is an example of the application of EMA to technological systems, which is allowed by the level of detail available in the LCI description of the system.


Emergy assessment of photovoltaic/thermal hybrid solar technology

Angel A. Bayod-Rújula1, Mark Brown2, Amaya Martínez-Gracia3, Alejandro Del Amo4

1CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain 2Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida

3CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Zaragoza, Spain 4Abora Solar S.L. Advanced solar energy, Spain

Photovoltaic–thermal hybrid (PVT) panels offer a practical means of generating both heat and electricity in a single device. Their performance is based on the principle that a PV cell does not only produces electricity but also acts as a thermal absorber. This thermal energy is transferred to a heat transfer fluid, obtaining useful thermal energy and refrigerating the PV cells at the same time. The hybrid technology can be then understood as a solar cogeneration which shows advantages related to energy supply, allowing the improvement of the energy yield per area unit of roof or façade. In this paper, the design of a PVT system to feed the domestic heat water requirements of a multihousing building is explained. The electricity production is also considered for common services of the neighborhood community, in accordance with the Spanish regulation for self-consumption, and including a charging system for electric vehicles. This option is compared to the solar conventional generation systems: thermal flat place collectors and photovoltaics panels. Emergy analysis is included in the analysis, together with energy and exergy considerations. Existing evaluations make of course solar power technologies advisable in order to save nonrenewable resources. With this work, we show the advantages of utilizing the solar untapped energy in hybrid panels as the key value for home renewable energy supply.

Developing synergies between human and natural systems with emergy assessment

Fabrizio Saladini1, Varsha Gopalakrishnan2, Simone Bastianoni1, Bhavik Bakshi2

1Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Ohio State University 2Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena

Sustainability requires human activities to be within nature's carrying capacity, but most existing methods for sustainable engineering do not consider this constraint. Techno-Ecological Synergy (TES) is a recent framework that aims to assess and design synergistic networks of technological and ecological systems by accounting for the demand and supply of ecosystem services at multiple spatial scales. This framework has been applied to the design of manufacturing processes, building systems, and agricultural landscapes, and is able to develop novel solutions that are ecologically and economically superior to solutions provided by conventional engineering methods. The concept of emergy is found to be useful for gaining greater insight into TES designs and for making decisions with multiple ecosystem services. We apply emergy analysis to the TES and conventional design of a biodiesel manufacturing process and its surrounding landscape. This application demonstrates the benefits of the emergy approach for aggregating and "valuing" ecosystem services and also helps identify the need for further advances that enable quantification of the demand and supply of ecosystem services in terms of emergy, and metrics that enable TES design.


8:20 - 10:25 Session 6 - Agricultural Systems (Room G310)

Sustainability evaluation of agricultural system in Dehua County based on emergy analysis

Huang Huang1,2, Jin-e Liu1,2, Hai-Rong Su1,2, Guo-Xiang Wang1,2

1School of Environment, Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Dev. and Appl., Nanjing Normal Univ, China

2Jiangsu Engineering Lab of Water and Soil Eco-remediation, Nanjing, China

Dehua County is located in Fujian Province, with subtropical mountains and forests, which has been developing as an ecological privilege region. In the past decades, ecological agriculture has been encouraged, population has been immigrated to central cities and a national forest park has been built. Hence, the agricultural system of Dehua County is going through the adjusting stage. We analyzed the agriculture industry structure during 2008-2013, to evaluate the sustainability of agricultural system in Dehua County. The results showed that: in the total emergy inputs had been increased to 2.69×1020 sej yr-1. The economic feedback (F) ratio was increased to 70%, while the emergy self-support ratio (ESR) was decreased. The emergy yields (Y) had been increased to 1.22×1021 sej

yr-1，to which stockbreeding and farming production contributed 73% and 18%, respectively. The emergy investment ratio (EIR was between 4.9~7.6 and higher than that of the Fujian Province of 1.73; the net emergy yield ratio (EYR was around 5.3. The environment load ratio (ELR was around 2.5 and lower than that of China 2.8; the emergy sustainable indices (ESI was between 2.0~2.5. The results indicated that agricultural system of Dehua County had run quickly at a higher efficiency. However, the high economic feedback (F) ratio of Dehua County made the agricultural yields costly and lowered the economic income of farmers. Moreover, the agricultural system of Dehua County had the low environment load ratio, indicating the low utilization pressure on the local environmental resources. Therefore, we suggested that Dehua County make efficient utilization of environmental resources including renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. The possible measures are adding solar energy hydraulic energy inputs instead of fossil fuel energy, and raising the organic fertilizer inputs instead of the industrial fertilizer. Finally, organic agriculture integrating the stockbreeding and farming production should be encouraged to optimize the agricultural system structure of Dehua County.


Comparison of locally grown grass-clover mixture with imported soybean meal for Danish pig feed

Andreas Kamp, Hanne Østergård

Technical University of Denmark, Chemical Engineering, Lyngby, Denmark

Agriculture in Denmark is characterised by industrial-scale pig production. Currently, protein for the approximately 30 million pigs produced per year is primarily in the form of imported soybean meal. Concerns of food security and environmental impacts from soybean production and transport have revived the interest in local feed production. To address these concerns, Danish researchers are at present investigating protein extraction from grass-clover mixtures with the aim of reducing soybean import. Preliminary tests indicate that it is technically possible to cultivate and process grass-clover mixture for pig feed in the required scale. However, is such a substitution desirable from an environmental perspective? In this study, we evaluate the ambition to replace fully the present demand for imported soybean protein in Denmark with protein from locally grown grass-clover mixtures. We compare a range of environmental impacts associated with, respectively, soybean and grass-clover mixture protein production. The assessment includes estimates of land and energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions associated with cultivation, processing and transport. We use the Emergy Assessment method to indicate biophysical efficiency (Unit Emergy Value), dependence on stock-unlimited flows (Global Renewability Fraction), dependence on local inputs (Local Supply Fraction), and support area (Emergy Footprint). Because co-production occurs in both systems, we elaborate on the implications of allocating environmental burdens between co-products. Consequently, the effect of allocation factors is studied in a sensitivity analysis.

Yield and emergy analysis of organic urban agriculture in Sydney,

Australia

Robert McDougall

School of Environmental and Rural Sciences, Univ. of New England, Australia

It has been suggested by numerous authors that food system sustainability could be improved through producing greater quantities in urban areas where much of it is ultimately consumed, however little quantitative research has previously been carried out examining the productivity of urban farming systems. We conducted a year-long case study of 12 organic urban agriculture systems in Sydney, Australia, managed primarily by amateur gardeners, and found mean yields to be 6.97kg m-2, around twice the yield of typical commercial vegetable farms. Whilst these systems used land efficiently, economic and emergy analyses


showed they were relatively inefficient in their use of other resources. Mean emergy transformity was 2.72*107 solar emJoules per Joule of produce, an order of magnitude higher than typical for urban or organic systems and 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than many conventional rural farms. Emergy Yield Ratio for all sites was 1 (to two significant figures), showing that production was highly dependent on anthropogenic inputs. Just 10% of all inputs were considered ‘renewable’, resulting in a poor mean Environmental Loading Ratio of 15.32. However when all non-renewable inputs capable of being substituted with local renewable inputs were so replaced in a hypothetical scenario, the Environmental Loading Ratio improved to 1.41. If labour were considered a completely renewable resource (possibly appropriate given that most gardeners considered gardening a recreational, rather than productive, activity) the mean Environmental Loading Ratio improved to 2.91. These results show that urban agriculture can be highly productive, however this productivity comes with many trade-offs and care must be taken to ensure its sustainability.

What can Emergy tell about food: the impact of diets – The Brazilian case

Mariana Oliveira1, Enrique Ortega1, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz1, Federico Pulcelli2, Simone Bastianoni2

1 Ecological Engineering Lab., University of Campinas, SP, Brazil 2 Ecodynamics Group, Università di Siena, Italia

Recent studies on small farms production in a Brazilian region let us know the emergy required to produce the food eaten by local population. This information and previous emergy studies of main agriculture crops will allow us to make the Emergy Assessment of Brazilian Diets. This research will consider the food chain processes, from raw materials to prepared meals for main regions of Brazil. A food pyramid diagram will contain Emergy Indices of main Brazilian diets. This diagram will show renewability, emergy intensity, emergy yield, net emergy of the food, ecosystem efficiency, emergy exchange ratio and fair price to describe the production and transformation of solar and fossil fuel energy to food mass. This study will attend the research proposal presented on the last Emergy Conference by Prof. Simone Bastianoni. The study will include the emergy assessment of social impacts according with the Food Guide published by the Brazilian Health Ministry, in agreement with OMS directives, aiming to combat current food and life habits deeply related to obesity, malnutrition and famine.


Food security in Lebanon: an environmental accounting framework

Ludmila Skaf1, Elvira Buonocore1, Stefano Dumontet1, Roberto Capone2, Pier Paolo Franzese1

1Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy 2International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies

(CIHEAM), Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, Bari, Italy

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Food security is negatively affected by a complexity of factors. These include unstable social and political environments that preclude sustainable economic growth, war and civil strife, macroeconomic imbalances in trade, natural resource constraints, poor human resource base, gender inequality, inadequate education, poor health, natural disasters, and the absence of good governance. All these factors contribute to either insufficient national food availability or insufficient access to food by households and individuals. A world population approaching 9 billion by 2050 and higher incomes in developing countries will lead to increased food demand, which means significant challenges to sustainable agricultural production. Food is a basic human need and therefore it is crucial to find ways to draw sustainable food production and consumption patterns. Food production is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered. A large effort is needed to better understand the dynamics of an intertwined energy, environmental, and economic system such as agriculture and food production systems. An interdisciplinary effort is required to properly address the issue of food security considering different viewpoints, exploring in depth driving forces and environmental constraints associated with food production at local and global level. Critical to these investigations and ultimately to policy making is the need for multi-criteria assessment frameworks useful for evaluating sustainable production and consumption patterns, economic and environmental costs, and related impacts on environment at different scales. In this study, we implement a multi-criteria assessment framework taking into account emergy and other biophysical metrics to explore food production and security in Lebanon. Finally, different scenarios are drawn to assess how Syrian refugees are affecting food security in Lebanon.


10:50 – 12:30 Session 7 – Conceptual Frameworks (Chamber)

Emergy as a tool for an integrated knowledge

Francesco Gonella1, Silvio Cristiano1,2, Sofia Spagnolo1

1Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campus Scientifico, edificio ALFA, Venezia-Mestre, Italy

2Università Iuav di Venezia, Department of Design and Planning in Complex Environments, Venice, Italy

Starting with Environment Power and Society in 1971, to the Prosperous Way Down proposal thirty years later, most of Howard T. Odum’s fundamental titles address explicitly the potential of emergy as a general epistemological tool. But despite the growing number of studies and scholars who use emergy-based analyses, this epistemic potential remains somewhat underestimated and underexplored, however confined within the “emergy community”. As a matter of fact, Emergy talks us about deep aspects of the reality as a whole. Concepts like energy quality, donor-side view, as well as principles like the maximum (em)power, open a window to a variety of different disciplines and fields, in the holistic framework of an integrated and “universal” culture. Several emergy scholars have been aware of this need, and have worked to export emergetic concepts outside the realm of science. But now the factual inability of decision-makers to take on local and global concerns is urgently demanding for further efforts by the scientific community, aimed at providing tools that are analytically reliable and at the same time able to frame the problems within a systemic, holistic awareness, of which emergy is likely to represent one of the most profound ideas. In this contribution, we first provide a short overview of the epistemological aspects of emergy analysis concepts, with some examples of how they have been received outside the science realm. Then, we discuss about the potential of emergy as an effective bridge to reconcile different “cultures” within the same integrated picture. Information, higher education, scientific literacy, systemic purpose, epistemology, conflicts, are -besides emergy- some of the virtual keywords of this contribution.

IMM/CMI: Team-science in model-making as an essential part of

emergy analysis for environmental systems

Stuart Whipple, Bernard C. Patten

Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

The emergy concept arose in connection with socio-ecological energy-flow models. One of the core activities of emergy analysis is the construction of models of socio-ecological systems. The specification of such models provides a vital link in translating empirical measurements of systems into emergy analyses. What is included in model compartments, how compartments are connected,


and how system inputs and outputs are modeled provide the basis for, and constraints within which, emergy analysis is conducted. Therefore, model-making is an essential part of emergy analysis. An emergy basis for environmental applications can organize science-based management activities around three core properties of environmental systems, as follows: (1) Scale: system largeness and complexity, addressed by Institutionalized Model-Making (IMM); (2) Dynamics: change over time, met by stable Collaborative Modeling Institutes (CMI’s); and (3) Institutional Learning: Iterative collaborative model-making in CMI's provides opportunities for learning about model-making and emergy analyses. In CMI, collaborative modeling guides both scientific directions and institutional management. The paper describes how IMM and CMI can be operationally combined to produce: (1) integrated modeling, science, and management grounded in formalism of complex system science; (2) balanced reductionism and holism across relevant conceptual scales; (3) incorporation of empirical science ample to span these scales; (4) feedback guidance to define and stage further empirical science; (5) perpetual iterative interplay and improvement of modeling, science, and management; and (6) permanency and model use in institutional homes marked by a culture of collaboration and institutional learning.

From a mechanistic approach describing nature to characteristic of

self-organizing systems. Does it call for a new language?

Torbjörn Rydberg

Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, Swedish Univ. of Agricultural Sciences

Linguistic relativity, does the language shape our thinking about our world?

In the 17th century, Descartes and Newton helped to develop critical-rational thinking and a mechanistic view of life. A logical extension of this philosophy is seen today, where scientists attempt to understand nature by breaking systems into their constituent components and studying ever smaller pieces. Can we improve our understanding of our complex world by using a broader view to understand how systems self-organize?

Systems science uses organizing principles to explain how the world has and is developing in terms of functions and ordinality. These organizational principles explain how systems consistently entrain energy over time to create increasingly complex systems as a necessity for evolution in the world. This different way of thinking about science requires new scientific language.

Prigogine's theory of dissipative structures is a world view describing both matter and life based on the idea of entropy, while H.T. Odum's theories on Maximum empower explains the interactions and processes between system


components, and how complexity evolves. Do we need to clarify what approach is used when self-organizing systems and their interactions are described? Is there already a new scientific language use for this or is it a mix of old and new?

In this presentation, I will provide examples of how characteristics of self-organizing systems are expressed and discuss possibilities for more clarity about which scientific world view we are using.

Toward the thermodynamics and emergy of picture and other puzzle solving

Dennis Collins

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico (retired) This talk follows up on the Author's and Scienceman's paper "Clusters of High Transformity Individuals" Chapter 36 in Emergy Synthesis 9. Here instead of substrate being converted into product by a generalization of Michaelis-Menton enzyme kinetics, the interest is in pieces of a puzzle being converted into a finished picture. Other applications involve returning and re-connecting people to their homes after a storm or flood, or restoration of electrical grid after a hurricane, or assembling DNA in one dimension. At the start of putting together a, say 1000-piece puzzle, there are 1000 components, and clusters are gradually built up as pieces are fitted together, until if successful there is only one giant cluster or component with all 1000 pieces (or say the electrical grid is restored). Features of the puzzle, such as border, buildings, trees and sky, correspond to enzymes that aid in getting the puzzle done and their transformity can be measured by the jumps or fraction of the puzzle they help to complete. In doing a puzzle, pre-sorting into, say all the manmade structure pieces or border of a roof and then all the tree pieces leads to jumps in progress of doing the puzzle. Thermodynamically the problem involves completely distinguishable particles as perhaps a modification of Fermi-Dirac statistics, since each piece goes in exactly one place. Attempts to measure entropy can involve measuring the work required to add each piece, and topological properties, such as Betti numbers or number of holes left in each cluster, studied, sometimes in reference to Zipf's law with changing powers and the Author's previous paper "Emergy-Symplexity."


10:50 – 12:30 Session 8 – Built Environment (G310)

The benefit of integrating emergy synthesis and LCA towards more comprehensive analysis of advanced building systems

Naomi Keena1, Marco Raugei2, Anna Dyson1

1Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), RPI, New York, NY 2Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Emergy analyses of buildings and architectural designs account for the materials and energy flows that go into the construction, operational life and decommissioning of a building. Many literature sources exist that reflect the UEVs for more typical building materials. However, these UEVs are often site- and time-specific, and cannot be easily extrapolated, particularly when the transportation and labor factors are taken into consideration. Furthermore, in the process of analyzing new and novel building systems, which aim to remedy the carbon and energy balance of buildings during the operational stage of their life span, we realized that many UEVs do not exist for newer more complex material systems. A study of a building-integrated solar PV system highlighted these two points. Here, many values were taken from literature to estimate the appropriate UEVs, based on life cycle analysis (LCA) databases and various studies. This led us to a deeper reflection on the opportunity of integrating emergy analysis within the LCA method in the first place, which would permit leveraging comprehensive LCA databases, while at the same time augmenting LCA with an assessment of the total work of the geo-biosphere that underpins the resources used, which conventional LCA fails to consider through its more utilitarian focus.

Conceptualizing craft and design in building construction through energy, structure and information

Ayodh Vasant Kamath

PennDesign, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

This paper uses e[m]ergy analysis to compare the environmental impacts of design, and its fabrication, with craft processes. In the context of e[m]ergy analysis, Odum (2007, 76) explains material structure to be the result of self-organizing physical processes driven by hierarchical flows of energy. He defines information as “the parts and relationships of something that take less resources to copy than to generate anew” (Odum 2007, 87). Parcell (2012, 14) describes the construction of buildings as the redistribution of materials found on earth to satisfy the objectives of the dweller. Various authors (Pye 1968, Frampton 1970, Risatti 2007, Ingold 2013) have used a variety of frameworks to identify craft and


design as two distinct ways of creating material artifacts. This research extends this scholarship to investigate craft and design in building construction through the framework of energy, structure and information. This research shows that design conceptualizes materials through informational processes while craft engages with material structure. Using the example of bamboo as a building material that is used differently by designers and craftspersons (Janssen 2000), this paper compares the environmental impacts of these differences between design and craft processes through e[m]ergy diagrams.

Frampton, Kenneth. 1970. "Labour, Work and Architecture." In Meaning in Architecture, by Charles Jenks, 151-170. New York: G. Braziller.; Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. New York: Routledge.; Janssen, Jules J.A. 2000. Designing and Building with Bamboo. Tech. Report, Eindhoven: INBAR (International Network for Bamboo and Rattan).; Odum, Howard Thomas. 2007. Energy, Power and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy. New York: Columbia University Press.; Parcell, Stephen. 2012. Four Historical Definitions of Architecture. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.; Pye, David. 1968. The Nature and Art of Workmanship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.; Risatti, Howard. 2007. A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Emergy synthesis of urban form and CO2 emissions

Po-Ju Huang, Shu-Li Huang

Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, Taiwan

Currently, the research of “Urban planning and climate change mitigation” is primarily focused on relationships between urban form and daily consumption of energy. The energy consumption of building construction and the consequent emission of greenhouse gas have rarely been discussed. Due to the construction techniques and socioeconomic demand, there are different types of buildings (e.g. materials, density, etc.) that were constructed during different stages of urban development, which also reflects in the historical and social complexities of a city. The primary aim of this study is to evaluate emergy storage of different building types and assess their GHG emissions during the construction of buildings. Firstly, this study analyzed urban form and classified city building into different types to represent the urban forms of different urban development stage. Secondly, according to different construction materials required by different types of buildings and the labor, time, and other resources inputs for the construction process, emergy syntheses were carried out to derive the embodied energy consumption per square meter of buildings. Finally, the emergy storage density of different buildings are translated into GHG emissions and presented spatially to understand the relationship between different urban form and GHG emissions in Taipei. The results can be used to frame the relationships between urban development, urban form and emergy storage to discuss the effects of urban planning on GHG emissions.


Emergy Expenditure among municipal wastewater treatment systems

across the US

Ranjani B. Theregowda1, Sam Arden2, Xin (Cissy) Ma3, Jay Garland4

1National Research Council Research Fellow 2Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida

3Water Systems Division, National Risk Management Research Laboratory USEPA, Cincinnati, Ohio

4Systems Exposure Division, National Exposure Research Laboratory, USEPA, Cincinnati, Ohio

The urbanization of the modern community creates large population centers that generate concentrated wastewater. A large expenditure on wastewater treatment has to be invested to make a modern city function without human and environmental health problems. Society relies on systems with various technological energies utilizing certain emergy expenditure to disperse the wastewater. Though non-energy inputs can be significant in wastewater treatment and conveyance, energy use is no doubt the underline expenditure that dominants the system impacts. It often is affected by influent mixed sewer characteristics, topography, treatment technology, regulatory requirement, water transport, scale, etc. This study aims to use emergy as a tool to evaluate total energy use in different sewer systems and probe where the most efficiency gain or energy use reduction could be. Emergy evaluation not only capture the flows in technosphere systems, but also quantify the flows and storage in biosphere such as resource use. Various energy use profiles from communities such as Bath, NY, Lawrence, MA, San Francisco, CA, Miami, FL, Cincinnati, OH, Northern Kentucky SD1 or Dayton, OH will be compiled and compared. The results will help us better understand the thermodynamic requirement ranges for wastewater dissimilation and water/energy nexus in urban settings.


Friday, January 26 (The Chamber)

13:45 – 15:15 Session 9 - Systems Principles, Networks, Self-Organization

Isomorphic systems processes represented and not represented in Odum’s General Systems Ecology

Len Troncale

Past President, ISSS, Emeritus Prof. & Past Chair, Biological Sciences California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

The Systems Processes Theory (SPT) is a prototype systems science (SS) and general theory of systems (GTS). In 1994, Odum republished his original Systems Ecology text with the title, Ecological and GENERAL SYSTEMS (my emphasis). In 1991, Odum was elected President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) at the request of this author. This society was the historical base for attempts at research on a general systems theory. Odum had been a regular contributor to, and supporter of general theory approaches for decades. This paper assesses the work of Odum on Emergy, Transformity, and ecology as a lifework worthy of classification as both a prototype SS and GTS. Criteria for both are cited and why debates over criteria are a superior basis for advancement in this new transdiscipline. Presence or absence of isomorphies is presented as both an historical and sine qua non criterium for both SS & GTS. The paper includes definitions and illustrations of isomorphy, and proving isomorphy as well as why study of the processes that produce isomorphies could be a science-based, evidence-based study that improves GTS attempts. The aforementioned SPT presents a high-resolution listing of 110 candidate isomorphies and a moderate-resolution index of 55, many more than previous and current workers. An index analysis of several of Odum’s books indicates that he elucidates 20 of the 55 moderate-resolution isomorphies. This paper shows which key isomorphs that Odum leaves out, some possible consequences of their absence, and indicates that some of the work of Odum indicates that SPT could profitably adopt some of his isomorphic insights as new candidate isomorphs to improve and widen its coverage. In conclusion, the paper indicates that both lifeworks might have much to contribute to each other. As a special addendum to this paper, or presentation, or as a follow-up evening discussion, this author would also like to organize or evaluate organization of special international team projects on: (these would work with ongoing INCOSE/ISSS projects)

1. The New Systems Pathology and Emergy Research 2. Implications of Systems Allometry for Emergy Research 3. The SPT Unbroken Sequence of Scalar Origins (Emergence) and Transformity 4. Inclusion of Cell and Molecular Data & Systems Genomics into Emergy Research 5. Using Isomorphies as Integrated Teaching Themes for Man and Environment Courses 6. Integrated Science General Education as “Stealth” Systems Science for Every University 7. The New Systems Mimicry & SysInformatics and Emergy Research


Emergy and efficiency analysis of historical bubbles Mark P.A. Ciotola

San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA

Human societies comprise energy-consuming beings, who as both individual organisms and organized societies, are vast consumers of emergy. Hence it should be possible in principle to generate models of historical phenomena that are expressed in terms of energy and constrained in terms of exergy. Historical data for preindustrial societies may not exist in the quantity or quality available for more recent societies. Yet the emergy involved in specific chemical reactions has remained invariant over the course of human history. Hence, there are proxies for emergy consumption by historical societies, including human population and grain production. Emergy accounting has been used to analyze contemporary society as well as some historical examples. This paper will continue such analysis of historical societies by delving into the phenomena of the “bubble”. History is replete with bubble-like rise and fall structures. This paper will explore models including the Dutch Tulip Bulb business bubble of the 1600s, resource bubbles for both gold and petroleum, and Russian and Chinese dynasties. There is significant thermodynamic evidence that far-from-equilibrium structures result in emergent structures to increase (perhaps even maximize) the rate of energy use, manifesting exponential growth. In contrast, where there is a resource of a magnitude that is nonrenewable within relevant time windows, each additional unit of consumed emergy will tend to occur at lower efficiency. This assertion is demonstrated by observing the Carnot efficiency limit of a hypothetical heat engine operating upon a nonrenewable thermodynamic potential (where all work becomes anergy. Combining the exponential growth tendency with declining efficiency results in a rise-and-fall pattern. This approach can called efficiency-discounted exponential growth (EDEG). Hence, these rise-and-fall patterns of bubbles will be analyzed not only in terms of emergy, but also efficiency. Particular attention is devoted to the distinction between the intrinsic thermodynamic efficiency of the progression of a historical process versus efficiency gained through economies of scale, and the social implications of the resulting centralization.

Emergy minimization in ecosystems and the biosphere: Network relational elements self-organize to generate maximum power per

unit of boundary energy–matter inputs

Bernard C. Patten

Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Compartmental networks are in the first instance transactional. They store and transfer conservative energy and matter over zero-sum links between node (compartment) pairs. The transfers produce non-conservative and nonzero-sum secondary relational networks with reflexive, transitive, and symmetric elements. Each reflexive element operating alone can generate significant power


(throughflow) and energy density (storage) at each node per unit of boundary input, whereas transitive and symmetric elements can produce by themselves only small, high-emergy flows and stocks. When nodes (reflexive) and links (transitive, symmetric) join to produce coupling, a multiplier effect ("TSUNAMI") greatly increases power production, and correspondingly decreases emergy. Elements of the amplification phenomenon (number of nodes, extent of coupling, number of pathways, mass of storages, magnitude of flows) are illustrated employing a classic salt marsh ecosystem model (Teal, 1962). Being mediated by digraph structure (topology), this phenomenon is referred to as network toposynergetics.

Self-Organizing Systems, when modeled according to the Maximum Ordinality Principle, always present explicit formal

solutions, in their Proper Time and Proper Space

Corrado Giannantoni

Ex-ENEA’s Researcher and Consultant of Duchenne Parent Project Onlus, Rome, Italy

In a previous paper (Gainesville 2016), we have shown that “The “Emerging Quality” of Self-Organizing Systems, when modeled according to the Maximum Ordinality Principle (MOP), offers a Radically New Perspective to Modern Science”.

One of the major novelties presented in this paper is that all Self-Organizing Systems always present explicit formal solutions. Such a very general property evidently has a huge relevance from an operative point of view.

The abovementioned solutions, however, precisely because of Ordinal Nature, result as being deeply different from the traditional adopted (or researched for) in Modern Science. For example, when the MOP is adopted to describe the Solar System or a Galaxy, the corresponding “emerging” formal solutions suggest the abandon of the concept of “gravitation”.

In addition to the previous aspect, the same “emerging” solutions reveal another important novelty, which is particularly meaningful from a conceptual point of view: each Self-Organizing System evolves in a “time” and a “space” which are exclusive and specific of the System analyzed. Consequently, the latter can be termed as “Proper Time” and “Proper Space” of the System.

In order to show the profound novelty of these two concepts, the paper will present a synthetic comparison with the corresponding concepts adopted in General Relativity. A comparison that will also enable us to show an interesting “analogy”: Einstein’s space-time conception may substantially be seen as a “com-possible” attempt at introducing the formal concept of “incipient derivative” of the first order.

Friday, Jan 26, Poster Session

POSTER SESSION USTLER HALL

Emergy evaluation of the intertidal kelp, Lessonia berteroana: Implications for fisheries management

Fernando A. Berrios Robles1, Daniel E. Campbell2

1Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad de Antofagasta, Chile 2USEPA, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental

Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division Narragansett, RI

Marine ecosystems found along the northern coast of Chile are among the most productive in the world due to upwelled waters enriched with nutrients. In this region, the rocky intertidal is frequently dominated by the kelp species, Lessonia berteroana, that sustains the ecological system with its fishery resources and builds habitat that promotes diversity and heterogeneity of the marine ecosystem. This species reduces the intensity of waves and current speeds in intertidal pools, thereby retaining organic matter and providing food and refuge for invertebrates, which in turn creates nursery areas for schooling fish. In the last decade, this kelp species has been subject to heavy commercial exploitation, reducing, in some places dramatically, plant density. This fishery is carried out, in part, by collecting algae that die of natural causes, since large natural mortality occurs due to the impacts of waves and bottom currents. However, direct extraction and the high purchase price of this resource has stimulated some fishermen to join this fishery. This high demand has led to a decree by the government requiring that mandatory measures for the management of brown algae be put in place in some regions. In this study, emergy evaluation was used to assess the contributions of the coastal kelp fishery to the regional economy and also to the international market for the kelp. The emergy and emdollar value of the work accomplished by the ecosystem in supporting the brown kelp artisanal fisheries was determined. Also, the equity of the exchange of value between fishermen and the buyers of kelp products was evaluated for each of the steps in the commercial chain of exploitation. Finally a comparison of the sustainability of three exploitation scenarios for kelp was performed 1) natural mortality, 2) fishing mortality and 3) both carried out at the same time.

Calculating the wind energy input to a system using a spatially explicit method that considers atmospheric stability

Daniel E. Campbell1, Michael Charpentier2

1USEPA, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division Narragansett, RI

2 CSRA, Narragansett, RI

Atmospheric stability has a major effect in determining the wind energy doing work in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL); however, it is seldom considered in determining this value in emergy analyses. One reason that atmospheric


stability is not usually considered is that a suitable method for making this determination is not readily available. Another difficulty is that determining the stability of the atmosphere requires data on the vertical profiles of wind speed and potential temperature that are not often available at the times and places needed to make these calculations. The problem of estimating atmospheric stability can be simplified by using the Pasquill-Gifford method of defining stability categories. This method requires data on wind speed at a known height, an estimate of the solar heating regime and an estimate of the quantity of cloud cover. In this study we used the Pasquill-Gifford method of determining atmospheric stability to develop a method to calculate the wind energy absorbed in the boundary layer under stable, neutral and unstable atmospheric conditions. Atmospheric stability was calculated using data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) global weather dataset, which reports all of the necessary variables as 22-year or 10-year averages for 1 degree grids of latitude and longitude. We combined estimates of the time that the atmosphere was in stable, unstable, or neutral conditions and the average wind velocity at a height of 50 m obtained from the NASA data with landscape roughness elements, z0’s, determined for each land use land cover (LU/LC) type in the National Land Cover Database. These data were substituted into the equations governing the wind profile under stable, unstable and neutral conditions, which were then integrated over the average height of the ABL for the given stability conditions to estimate the wind energy doing work on the surface for each LU/LC type. These estimates were applied to the landscapes of the States of Illinois, Indiana, and to the Chicago Metropolitan Areas including the 7 counties of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the 14 county (2007) and the 19 county (2012) Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Areas defined by the U.S. Census Bureau to determine the wind energy doing work on the systems within these spatial boundaries.

Emergy evaluation of the United States, U.S. Education, Educational Attainment and the National Financial System from 1950 through 2016

Daniel E. Campbell1, Henry A. Walker1, Hongfang Lu2

1USEPA, Office of Research and Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division Narragansett, RI

2 South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

Past work quantifying the emergy basis for the U.S. economy, the U.S. education system and the educational attainment of the population through 2011 is brought up to date with the most recent data available from the U.S. Statistical Abstracts, as well as other critical information sources. In addition, the U.S. financial system is quantified from 1950 to 2016 and this information is added to the characterization of the national system as a way to better understand the choices in the application of money to facilitate national material and energy flows that have determined the past history of the national system, e.g., the Great Recession of 2008 and the subsequent recovery to the present state of the


system (circa 2016), and that may also influence its future. The emergy base for the U.S. national system is re-characterized to include the emergy contributed by people through their knowledge and experience on an equal basis with the emergy of energy, material and other information inputs. The proposal that the portion of the total knowledge in educational attainment delivered by the active workforce be considered as part of the emergy basis for a nation is new and if accepted it will require carrying out emergy analyses of education systems in many nations. Establishing an emergy basis for the work of people, for which money is paid, provides the information needed to bring closure on the combined emergy-money income statements and balance sheets used in environmental accounting. More comprehensive accounting can help inform borrowing for future investments in energy, material, and education infrastructure to build more inclusive access to real wealth.

Care before business: on the potential of emergy analysis to address the sustainability of not-for-profit systems

Silvio Cristiano1 2, Francesco Gonella1, Emanuele Nannini3, Sofia Spagnolo1

1Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campus Scientifico, edificio ALFA, Venezia-Mestre, Italy 2 Università Iuav di Venezia, Department of Design and Planning in Complex

Environments, Venice, Italy 3 Emergency Onlus NGO, Humanitarian Office, Milan, Italy

Tools and methods to assess sustainability are often focused on lucrative activities, searching for behaviours that preserve some business as usual while at the same time taking into account environmental issues. Emergy analysis was originally inspired from and applied to natural ecosystems as a method able to geobiophysically account for non-monetary inputs. In recent years, however, even emergy accounting has been more and more applied to investigate the supply of products and services that are mostly referred to public or private budgeted investments. In the present contribution, we show the potential of the emergy analysis in addressing activities that are outside the logic of business, depending on voluntary work and donations: this is the case of nonprofit entities (like nongovernmental organisations, associations and movements), unpaid household work, and unpaid care (e.g., towards children, ill or aged people). Our societies significantly rely upon such activities, which are in turn based on the energy, materials and information flows that support the society. If the popular adage 'There is no such thing as a free lunch' was proposed in the early 1970s as one of the laws of ecology (cf. Commoner, 1971), we might also say that there is no such thing as a free service in sustainability studies. Therefore, an assessment of the sustainability of nonprofit activities and entities cannot disregard the systemic interconnections of all of their inputs with the larger support systems, which in turn affect their ability to adapt and survive. In this presentation, some examples will be given of emergy accounting applied to not-for-profit activities.


When systemic sustainability is an everyday struggle: an Emergy-based analysis of a Dog Shelter

Francesco Gonella1, Giordano Brocca1, Silvio Cristiano1, Nicole Khoury2, Giovanna Salmistraro2, Sofia Spagnolo1

1 Ca’ Foscari Univ. of Venice, Campus Scientifico, edificio ALFA, Venezia-Mestre, Italy 2 Rifugio del Cane, Rubano (PD), Italy

Although neglected in the narrative about smart and sustainable cities, the communities of animals should be regarded as part of the citizenry, due to biophysical, systemic and ethical reasons. The structures taking care of the abandoned dogs in most cases must count almost only on private donations and voluntary work, despite the relevant resource flows needed for the system management. In this work, an emergy analysis is presented for a Dog Shelter, located in Italy near Venice, that hosts more than abandoned 100 dogs (plus as many cats), providing health care, food, shelter, company, and -in several cases- specific physical and psychological support. The Shelter provides also the formation of volunteers and, thanks to several public events, promotes public awareness and possibly the re-integration of the four-legged guests in a family. Emergy accounting results showed the criticality of a system that cannot define a budget in advance, nor make any reliable prediction about the flows of resources needed for the next year, or even month. Furthermore, it was pointed out the need for a continuous feedback action between the image of the structure, carried by its own activities and by the public events, and the flow of donations supporting the Shelter, that in turn contribute to increase the quality of the service. A set of indicators was finally determined, some of which specifically defined that take into account the role of non-payed labor and services. The sej/dog was calculated for the whole care of the “average dog” during one year.

Relationship between emergy input and benthic community structure of tidal flat ecosystems in Korea

Naryeong Kim1, Daeseok Kang1, Jongseong Ryu2

1Dept. of Ecological Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea 2Department of Marine Biotechnology, Anyang University, Incheon, Korea

As the most distinct feature of coastal systems of Korea, tidal flat ecosystems have provided diverse ecological, economic and cultural benefits to the Korean society. As a part of a research that aims at establishing a marine spatial planning framework in Korea, this study used the emergy methodology to understand the characteristics of ecological conditions and ecosystem service provision of tidal flat ecosystems. Considering size, river input, geomorphology and tidal regime, a total of thirteen tidal flats in the west and south coasts were selected to analyze the relationship between emergy input and benthic community. Four ecological parameters (number of species, density, biomass, Margalef’s species richness


index) were selected from national ecological surveys of coastal wetlands in 2015~2016. Fishery production that is a main provisioning service of Korean tidal flats was selected to understand the emergy basis of ecosystem service provision. Tidal energy dominated the emergy input from environmental sources to tidal flat ecosystems. Emergy input per unit area of tidal flats decreased along the coastline from northwest to southeast, reflecting the general pattern of tidal ranges on the Korean coast. There was a general trend in which tidal flats in the west coast with greater emergy input showed higher species richness, biomass, and fishery production. However, ecological parameters of benthic community and fishery production did not show significant relationships with total emergy inputs among individual tidal flats. More ecological parameters and improvements in data resolution are needed to derive useful information to contribute to improving management policies for tidal flats in Korea.

Can we learn from the Kogi?

Eric Lee

A-sociated Press, Tucson, AZ

A major study of the Kogi, a remnant of the pre-Columbian Tairona civilization, is proposed. Tairona 1 phase began 1st century CE and pulsed in 5th century. After environmental restoration, Tairona 2 phase pulsed 400 years after the Tairona 1 phase descent. The Tairona 3 phase began 10th century and prospered for 750 years until lowland Tairona were exterminated by Spanish in 1650. Survivors joined the highland Tairona of which only the Kogi have been able to maintain their 2,000 year-old complex society intact. They may have learned from the phase 1 and 2 failures to live sustainably by avoiding empire building, elite material wealth building, overshoot, and focusing on a biophysical economy of enough for all. An elite ‘priesthood’ receive 18 years of intensive education to manage human demands on Nature’s resources which they have been doing for 1,100 years. They have tried twice to communicate with us, to warn us that 'there is no life without thought’. A systems science big-picture study could learn what we ‘Younger Brothers’ need to learn to get through the 21st century. They are living the prosperous life of enough we may hope to aspire to if we but listen. The study would not be an anthropological outing, needs to be based on systems ecology lead by a systems science team for the same reason the Manhattan Project was run by physicists. A draft of poster is at end of http://sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/we-can-learn-from-these-people.html

Do Emergy Yield Ratios matter? Eric Lee

A-sociated Press, Tucson, AZ

Based on an article, 'Emergy Yield Ratios Matter: Why alternative energy isn't alternative', read by Mark Brown who provided a current estimate for EYR of solar PV and Dan Campbell who invited me to post/talk. The article contains no


original research or information. Of possible interest, for didactic purposes I envisioned an 'alternative' energy 'source' based on generators installed in downspouts to capture the potential energy from roof rainwater runoff. E-downspouts could generate electricity, all roofs could have gutters and downspouts, and if subsided, all downspouts in the world could generate electric. All roofs could have solar PV too. The question that matters is would net emergy be produced? For e-downspouts, I assume the EYR is < 1. If < 1, society could still invest billions in an e-downspout energy production system using cheap coal in China that would be a net consumer of energy. If EYR of solar PV is 1.8/1 or even 2.x/1, then what? Some net emergy, but solar is not alternative to 10/1 fossil fuels, and as energy is 'real wealth', the future of industrial society may not resemble the past. The poster will include a 'contest' to see who can guess the EYR of e-downspouts, the winner getting bragging rights. The poster will include talking points of interest and I added a draft at the end of the article: http://sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/emergy-yield-ratio-matters.html

Energy activism

Sue Lee

Citizen activist, Tucson, AZ

Emergy related concerns are a subsystem of systems science. For public outreach, coin a word for “systems science literate.” The word, per Garrett Hardin, is “ecolacy,” the third pillar of an educated mind (literate, numerate, ecolate) upon which human survival/prosperity depends. Citizens can support existing endeavors to be ecolate, such as MAHB (Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere), carry a sign when in public to inform or 'protest'. Scarcity engenders conflict which wastes potential energy which increases scarcity and so on in a downward death-spiral typical of complex societies, so peace, successfully managing conflict, is essential to enable cooperation which is in turn based on trust. Peace also involves living in harmony with biophysical systems to avoid scarcity. Citizens can run for office—not to be elected, but to thereby educate the public about ecolate issues. A 21st century iteration of the Technocracy Movement is possible, a Naturocracy Movement based on energy principles. Posterity activism is secondary to the long-term view foundational to an ecolate system's view. If we do not succeed in managing a harmonious descent, we may have to Reboot civilization by installing a new Ecolate OS which we should be writing now. An Ecolate Party Platform lists policies that should be thinkable—half or more are from the Odums' A Prosperous Way Down. To understand this earth is a need. To love this earth requires action based on understanding. A draft is at http://sustainable.soltechdesigns.com/up-with-naturocracy.html


Emergy-based Sustainability Assessment of Geum River Watershed in Korea

Seungjun Lee

Korea Environment Institute, Sejong, Republic of Korea

As sustainability is a concept oriented toward the balanced development of environment, economy, and society, a proper valuation of the environment is required to compensate the previous policy direction that has focused on the economy. The environmental management based on a watershed, which is a unit of material and energy circulation, considers the interaction between natural and socioeconomic environments. The purpose of this study is to design an evaluating method of the watershed sustainability using emergy methodology. As a case study, the study evaluates the sustainability of the Geum River watershed, where development pressure has recently been increasing, using the method suggested in this study. Since the current national and local statistics are arranged by administrative district units, uncertainty may increase in the transformation of the data into the one for a watershed unit. Although the renewable resource data like weather or area is relatively straightforward for a watershed unit, socioeconomic data such as imports and exports requires the transformation of the data for a watershed unit by a proportion of area, gross production, or population. Since the emergy is generally evaluated using the quantity of material, energy, and information previously used to make a product, the socioeconomic data, which is typically represented by a monetary unit, may underestimate the emergy of a product. As a result of the emergy evaluation of the Geum River watershed using the method suggested in this study, the EYR is as low as 1.03, and the ELR is as high as 153.18. The ESI, thus, is as low as 0.0067. The dependence of the economy on the externally purchased resources is the major factor that influences the low EYR and the high ELR. That is, most of the emergy of the Geum River watershed comes from the domestic and international imports.

Towards an emergy-based labeling system as a mean to characterize and valorize agriproducts

Matteo Maccanti1, Giulia Goffetti1, Elena Neri1,2, Mariana Oliveira3, Riccardo M. Pulselli1,2, Simone Bastianoni1

1Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena, Italy 2INDACO2 srl, Italy

3Ecological Engineering Lab, University of Campinas (SP - Brazil)

The Monte dei Paschi di Siena Foundation is going to support a two-year research project based on a systematic monitoring activity of the agricultural systems in the Province of Siena. The aim of the project is to characterize and valorize a representative number of local agriproducts and typical production processes by means of emergy evaluation. Representativeness is ensured by a selection of farms based on type of products, production forms and geographical localization. The research has the purpose of providing an assessment of


products and systems within a circumscribed area trying to understand criticalities and strengths of different practices. The project will provide a dataset of emergy values for products (e.g. UEVs) and their degree of renewability to be further used to evaluate menus, diets, and nutritional habits. The information collected by this systematic investigation will aim at establishing a labelling system, based on emergy, to facilitate the communication: the values of the work of nature necessary to obtain agriproducts and its overall renewability will be shown through infographics and used by single producers or, for example, restaurants to inform customers.

Emergy analysis of agricultural systems in a water basin to know their influence on water infiltration

Mariana Oliveira, Enrique Ortega, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz, Thais Yaguti

Ecological Engineering Lab., University of Campinas, SP, Brazil

The main objective of this work is to identify and characterize the agricultural activities through the survey of the use and occupation of the soil in representative properties of the region of the springs of the Piracicaba river using the methodology. The knowledge obtained helped to understand the local factors that influence the water crisis affecting the lives of millions of people in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo and in the nearby cities supplied by the Piracicaba, Capivari and Jundiaí Rivers Hydrographic Basin. The city of Joanópolis, located in the interior of the São Paulo State, was chosen as a study area for having in its territory numerous springs of the Piracicaba river. Thirteen properties with diverse characteristics were visited having in common the familiar administration. The field visits with interviews with the owners and technicians allowed to collect data and carry out the emergy analysis. It was possible to conclude that ecological practices bring benefits to the ecosystem, just as monocultures bring losses. The best results were observed when within the properties there is a forest that is preserved, or in regeneration, with sufficient area to absorb the environmental impacts of agricultural practices. Also, it was possible to conclude that the ecological management practices protect and maintain the quality of the springs and allow the infiltration of water in the soil. The thirteen properties were grouped according to the main soil uses and occupation of the land, which are: ecological horticulture with preserved areas, pastures, ecological horticulture and pastures, banana trees, preserved areas with low production and eucalyptus. In this order, the average values of the indicators are: Renewability - 75%, 55%, 75%, 43%, 60%, 93% e 12%; Emergy Yield Ratio– 2.04, 1.31, 1.99, 1.15, 1.81, 9.86, 1.18; Emergy Investment Ratio – 0.97, 3.19, 1.25, 6.78, 1.24, 0.30, 5.62; Emergy Exchange Ratio – 1.10, 1.59, 1.21, 0.28, 0.38, 2.25, 2,53; Environmental Loading Ratio – 0.35, 0.82, 0.35, 1.34, 0.67, 0.08, 7.4; Total Emergy, in seJ/ha.year - 3.601, 1.034, 2.387, 5.334, 2.386, 2.558, 5.880; Production, in ton/ha.year – 2.94, 0.18, 2.29, 50, 26.4, 0.54, 7; UEVs in seJ/kg - 126.660, 47.045, 952.191, 13,110, 66.634, 559.605, 51.410; Water Infiltration - 29%, 18%, 65%, 83% 90% 58%, 10%; and Carbon Sequestration, in ton/ha.year - 6.6, 6.5, 5.8, 7.5, 9, 5.9, 24.


Emergy folio for agroecological systems analysis

Enrique Ortega, José Maria Gusman-Ferraz, Mariana Oliveira, Thais Yaguti

Ecological Engineering Lab., University of Campinas, SP, Brazil

Since 2000, the Emergy Folios offer basic concepts and calculation procedures to make emergy analysis of natural and human dominated systems. Each folio contains information of a specific scientific field, if the state-of-the-art changes it deserves a substitution. By definition, a folios´ collection can always add titles. This is the case of a folio devoted to Agroecology, it pretends to complement, enlarge and actualize the Florida Agriculture Folio released in 2001. We took in consideration all the studies on ecological farms carried out in Campinas, since 1994, to organize a folio to provide support for ecological farming emergy analysis. Agroecology provides important knowledge for a future based on local renewable resources and markets, labor-intensive work for migrants, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. As main results, we have: (a) information (“transferred knowledge”) seems to be the main driving force in transition process; even it is difficult to measure; (b) research data on soil´s behavior during ecological transition, in different productive arrangements and biomes, is scarce; (c) direct commercialization shows to be decisive to make the system economically attractive; (d) emergy indices deserve modifications for their use in agroecological systems assessment; (e) Emergy Exchange Ratio of all transactions allows a better understanding of farming system. It is described the ecological transition of a specific farm, using emergy indices. The folio compares results with emergy analysis of conventional agricultural systems and provides a table of EUV (transformities).

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Part 1: Methods framework and data sources

Jiamin Pan1, Gengyuan Liu1,2,*, Xueqi Wang1, Hao Zhang1, Sharlynn Sweeney3, Sergio Ulgiati4, Mark T. Brown3

1 State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing,, China

2 Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing, China

3 Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA 4 Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy

The National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0), following the Standardized National Emergy Synthesis proposed by S. Sweeney et al. (2007), focuses on GIS grid coverages for renewable flows, the processes of updating raw data necessary for tabular synthesis, filtrating energy conversion rates, replaced international trade statistics, and latest Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) for translating physical flows to emergy. The key updates includes (1) discussion of the statistical summaries of the different national renewable value between


patch/grid and entire national area; (2) Data sources changes of internal transformation flows; (3) New calculation framework based on the Harmonised System (HS) of international trade statistics; (4) LCA-mixed complex import and export commodities; and (5) latest Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) for translating physical flows to emergy.

The eco-economical evaluation of tidal flat restoration in Suncheon Bay

Naae Park, Suk Mo Lee

Department of Ecological Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, Republic of Korea

As the high economic and economical value of coastal wetland ecosystem is becoming popular, tidal flat restoration which allows seawater to flow back into abandoned salt pond and fish farm is progressing actively. In order to promote the importance of tidal flat restoration, it is necessary to quantitatively demonstrate the changes in value of restoration project. Thus, the emergy concept was used to estimate the changes in eco-economical value of tidal flat restoration in Suncheon Bay, Republic of Korea. Change of ecosystem through the project was done by circulation of seawater and introduction of species. The eco-economical value increased by 77.66 million em￦/yr with the implementation of the project. Additionally, indigenous storage including tidal flat organism was increased up to 15.7 billion em￦. The result shows that the project to preserve and restore the tidal flat, which has high eco-economical value, should be generalize because restoration for reclaimed land increases the renewable energy input as well as the biomass.

Integrating emergy accounting and marine spatial planning to assess natural capital in a Mediterranean protected area

Flavio Picone1,3, Buonocore E. 1,3, D’Agostaro R. 2,3, Donati S. 4, Chemello R. 2,3, Franzese P.P. 1,3

1Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy 2 Department of Earth and Marine Sciences, University of Palermo, Italy

3CoNISMa, Roma, Italy 4Egadi Islands Marine Protected Area

Marine and coastal ecosystems are among the most productive environments in the world and their stocks of natural capital offer a bundle of vital ecosystem services. Anthropogenic pressure seriously threatens health and long-term sustainability of marine environments. For these reasons, integrated approaches capable of combining ecological and socio-economic aspects are needed to achieve nature conservation and sustainability targets. In this study, the value of natural capital of the Egadi Islands Marine Protected Area (EI-MPA) was assessed through a biophysical and trophodynamic environmental accounting model. The emergy value of both autotrophic and heterotrophic natural capital stocks was


calculated for the main habitats of the EI-MPA. Eventually, the emergy value of natural capital was converted into monetary units to better communicate its importance to local managers and policy-makers. The total value of natural capital in the EI-MPA resulted in 1.12 · 1021 sej, equivalent to about 1.17 billion of euros. In addition, using Marxan software, the results of the environmental accounting were integrated with spatial data on main human uses. This integration took into account the trade-offs between conservation measures and human exploitation by means of two different scenarios, with and without considering human uses in the EI-MPA. The comparison between the scenarios highlighted the importance of taking into account human activities in marine spatial planning (MSP), allowing the identification of key areas for natural capital conservation. In conclusion, this study showed the importance of integrating environmental accounting with conservation planning to support effective strategies for ecological protection and sustainable management of human activities. The results of this study represent a first benchmark useful to explore alternative nature conservation strategies in the EI-MPA, and, more in general, in Mediterranean MPAs.

Are net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs) more sustainable? Eco-systemic analysis and discussions on building sustainability through a case study of a solar-powered low-energy house

Kaveh Samiei, Hwang Yi

Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture, College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts,

Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

This study aims to evaluate and discuss the sustainability of net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs), known as a type of the highest-performance building, using emergy analysis (EA), as a basis for assessing hierarchical quality and efficiency of building energy use. As a case study, the authors present to analyze a NZEB at Florida International University (FIU), built as an entry for the Solar Decathlon 2011, sponsored by U.S. Department of Energy. This building engages some on-site sustainable strategies for managing or producing renewable energy. Through a series of emergy syntheses based on field study and meter data collection, the total emergy of the NZEB was estimated and compared with an emergy study of another NZEB. The findings show that NZEBs tend to use more power with high-quality energies and the building components are organized hierarchically according to their energy qualities. This study demonstrates that building sustainability depends on power, rather than efficiency, and maximum power principle is applicable to discuss sustainable building design and construction.


Toward transformity of Christian or other advanced religion follower

David Scienceman, Dennis Collins1

1Univ. of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (retired), Winamac, IN, USA

This poster presents a diagram by David Scienceman, in only one page, of the basic story of the origins of the religious doctrine of Christianity as seen by an average Christian, using the Emergy Systems Language of H.T. Odum. Explanatory text is added, to follow up on previous papers, such as "The Jewish Pattern of History," Chapter 39 of Emergy Synthesis 9. Collins discusses whether the forgiveness response versus eye-for eye response leads to feedback loops that increase transformity; as well as the possible relevance of the Collins Aero Cube S4 Group Theory blocks that show the equivalence of four major computation methods. Scienceman points out that eye-for-eye is a step upward from "Hit back ten times harder" according to Dimont. Frequently there is loss of accuracy in hitting back ten times harder, so that a couple innocent people may be hit. If these people also adopt the "ten times harder" strategy, it may set off a chain reaction that increases negative feedback and decreases transformity of the system in comparison. For example the Norsemen tried to hunt down the indigenous eskimo-type people instead of learning from them how to live off the environment and so died out when ships could not replenish iron tools. On the other hand Pilgrims benefitted from the cooperation with Squanto in the 1620's increasing transformity of the system. Scienceman also raises the question of the transformity of the average Christian, for example the Norsemen versus Pilgrims, who started stealing corm from the Indians but managed to get a questionable peace treaty with Squanto as interpreter, perhaps leading to a comparison of transformity of Squanto versus Pilgrim.

Emergy and Life Cycle-based analyses of energy production systems: Preliminary study of a biogas power plant

Sofia Spagnolo1, Gianpietro Chinellato1,2, Silvio Cristiano3,4, Francesco Gonella3, Antonino Marvuglia5, Elena Semenzin1, Alex Zabeo1,6

1Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campus Scientifico, Venezia-Mestre, Italy

2Schmack Biogas s.r.l., Bolzano, Italy 3Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems, Ca’ Foscari University of

Venice, Campus Scientifico, Venezia-Mestre, Italy 4Dept. of Design and Planning in Complex Environments, Università IUAV di Venezia,

Venice, Italy 5Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Belvaux, Luxembourg

6Greendecision S.r.l., Venice, Italy

Biogas power plants (BPPs) have been rapidly developing in Italy in the latest years, thanks also to major government subsidies, especially in Northern Italy where numerous agriculture and zootechnical Companies are located. In this paper, conventional Emergy Analysis (EMA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods are used to study the sustainability conditions for a BPP. A real plant


located in Northern Italy and operating since 2012 is taken as case study. The quantification, in emergy terms, of natural resources used to build and operate the plant and the possible environmental impacts of materials and energy flows require a detailed analysis of several subsystems in the BPP. In this work, preliminary results are presented pointing out the differences and the complementarity of the used methodologies, with the aim of setting the basis for an emergy evaluation of the whole BPP and biomass production phases at the technosphere level of detail provided by the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), using the emergy calculation software SCALEM®.

Assessment of ecosystem services value of Liaohe Estuarine Wetland based on Emergy Theory

Fangli Su1, Lifeng Li2, Mark T. Brown3, Haisheng Liu1, Tieliang Wang1

1College of Water Conservancy, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China

2College of Science, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China

3Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

Wetland ecosystem functions and services to the human society have been generally recognized. Most of existing research is comprehensive evaluation of the ultimate value of wetlands. It is rarely to discuss for energy and matter lost and transferred during the process of ultimate service value to be achieved. The middle service value of wetland can avoid this problem because it can eliminate the repeated computation of wetland ultimately service value. In the process of commutating wetland ultimately service value, it is generally difficult for the economic evaluation to cover all aspects. In this research, the emergy theory was used to assess the Liaohe estuarine wetland ecosystem service value, and the ultimate services value was used as the total ecosystem services value of Liaohe estuarine wetland, the intermediate value was used to response ecological energy loss in the system. Results show that the ultimate services value of Liaohe estuarine wetland was $ 28.20 million, and the intermediate services value $35614.03 million. The difference of 1263 times between intermediate and ultimate value shows that a lot of server values was dissipated in the form of energy in the process of various wetland services, which embodies the emergy evaluation can make up for the disadvantage of energy flow in economic evaluation. In the ultimate services value of Liaohe estuarine wetland, the value of adjusting atmosphere was $ 8.02 million accounting for 28.45 % of the total value, flood diversion and storage value was $ 6.98 million accounting for 24.75 % of the total value, the wetland material production value was $ 2.68 million, scientific research and education value was $ 3.70 million, leisure entertainment value of $ 2.63 million, and water purification value of $ 3.72 million. These results illustrate that the most important service value of Liaohe estuarine wetland ecosystem is to adjust atmosphere and divert and storage flood,


suggesting that Liaohe estuarine wetland plays an important role in the regional moisture cycle. In the intermediate services value, maintaining biodiversity value was $ 34182 million accounting for 95.98 % of the total value, supplementing the groundwater value was $ 1431.63 million, water conservation and nutritional value were $ 0.03 and 0.55 million. These results show that Liaohe estuarine wetland plays an important role of the species resources and regional the seed Banks.

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0)

Part 3: Enhancing the sustainability narrative through a deeper understanding of indicators correlation

Xueqi Wang1, Gengyuan Liu1,2, Jiamin Pan1, Hao Zhang1, Sharlynn Sweeney3, Sergio Ulgiati4, Mark T. Brown3

1State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

2Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing, China

3Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA. 4Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy

Different sustainability indicators tend to reflect different or even converse outcomes in terms of countries. A careful comparative study is needed to clarify whether these indicators are actually coherent with each other. We analyze and compare the emergy indicators calculated by the National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) with five other sustainable development indicators. Pearson correlation was used to make a comparative study among them. Within the two groups, the indicators are positively correlated. The Sustainable Development Index (SDI) of the second group also shares a negative correlation with the Human Development Index. On the other side, the Emergy Sustainability Index was negatively correlated with the Environmental Performance Index, and had little or no correlation with the Environmental Sustainability Index. Furthermore, when examining the scores obtained from the different SDIs, the results demonstrate that they might present somewhat conflicting findings, if not considering their complementarity. This, from one side, depends on the fact that Human Development Index (HDI), Environmental Performance Index (EPI), and Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) provide a short-term local perspective on “sustainability”, while the Emergy-based Sustainability Index (EmSI) and Surplus Biocapacity are more long-term and global in their perspective. HDI, EPI, and ESI have a more social and economic focus, including indicators whose dynamics are disjoined from the natural one. The emerging differences might be explained through the analysis of the individual sub-indicators for each of the SDIs.


Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0) Part 2: Environmental accounting of national economic system from

2000-2015

Hao Zhang1, Gengyuan Liu1,2, Jiamin Pan1, Xueqi Wang1, Sharlynn Sweeney3, Sergio Ulgiati4, Mark T. Brown3

1State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

2Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing, China

3Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA. 4Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy

Among the key insights of environmental accounting is an understanding of the resources basis of human systems, and an estimation of the degree to which contemporary resource use exceeds renewable supply. Based on the National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0), we estimate various attributes of human-environment interactions at the national and global scales from 2000-2015, which include renewable and knowable resources use, environmental load, emergy and money and international debt. Time trends in resources and human well-being, the global depletion of natural capital are also discussed.

Emergy analysis for the floodplain of the Lower Yellow River intercepted by the Xianglangdi dam construction

Xiangping Zhang1, Yuanjian Wang, Shimin Tian1, Enhui Jiang

1Yellow River Institute of Hydraulic Research, Zhengzhou, China 2Key Laboratory of Yellow River Sediment Research, MWR, Zhengzhou, China

The floodplain of the Lower Yellow River is very important to maintain healthy development of river. And it is also the hometown for the people living there because it’s very habitable except the flood threat and for the past very years the flood happened scarcely. The Xianglangdi reservoir is a key water -control project of the Yellow River and it is associated with undesirable side effects on the environment, of which the dam blocks the natural processes of water environments through human intervention, and altering the structure and function of river ecosystem. In this paper, the floodplain ecosystem of the Lower Yellow River has been valued after the Xianglangdi dam construction based on emergy analysis, the pre-dam river system as a reference condition. The results indicated that the natural resources endowments didn’t change much. The emergy density of animals and plants decreased dramatically, while the biomass emergy diversity index increased a little. With a rapid development of China's economy in the past years, the purchased external resource input increased dramatically. The emergy input way of the ecosystem changed from multi-paths to single way of which the purchased external resource input is main. The emergy self-support ratio is reduced greatly. The emergy yield ratio of the floodplain of the Lower Yellow River after the Xianglangdi dam construction has been improved significantly.

Saturday, Jan 27, Session 10

Saturday, January 27, 2018 (The Chamber)

8:20 - 10:00 Session 10 - Ecosystem Services

Spatial comparison of the biophysical, emergy, emergy-monetary equivalence, and economic values of ecosystem services in Maryland

Elliott Campbell

Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis MD

An ecosystem service is a benefit to people derived from the natural environment. The value of ecosystem services can be expressed in different ways; here we spatially present four alternatives options for calculating ecosystem service value across the State of Maryland. Biophysical value refers to the biologically driven physical flow of the ecosystem service, e.g. kilograms of carbon or nitrogen taken up by the ecosystem or cubic meters of water supply. Emergy is a measure of biophysical value quantifying the cumulative quantity of energy required to generate the service, quantified in the common unit of solar emjoules, and allows for direct comparison of donor value across services. Using an emergy-monetary equivalence allows emergy values to be expressed in dollars, through dividing the emergy value by the average ratio of emergy to money as observed in an economy. Economic value is assessed using the eco-price, a compilation of previously expressed monetary preferences for ecological work, categorized by ecosystem service. This work presents the relative magnitudes of these values across Maryland, advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches, and implications of using one approach over another for natural resource management.

Natural capital and ecosystem services assessment in marine ecosystems using emergy accounting

Pier Paolo Franzese1,2, Elvira Buonocore1,2, Flavio Picone1,2, Giovanni F. Russo1,2

1Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy 2CoNISMa, Roma, Italy

The awareness about the importance of evaluating and conserving natural capital has increased among both scientists and policy makers. The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has been developed to remark the vital support provided by nature to human economy and well-being. Marine and coastal ecosystems are among the most productive environments in the world and their stocks of natural capital offer a bundle of vital ecosystem services. The exploitation of marine ecosystems generates goods, services but also impacts (e.g., emissions, wastes). In this context, environmental accounting represents a useful tool for the assessment of multiple aspects dealing with marine resources exploitation,


among which the most relevant are the sustained environmental costs, received benefits, and generated impacts. In 2014, the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea funded a research programme for the implementation of an environmental accounting system for all the twenty-nine Italian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The main goal of the research programme is the assessment of the biophysical (emergy) and economic value of natural capital stocks and ecosystem services flows generated by MPAs. Such environmental accounting system can play an important role for the management and monitoring of MPAs, supporting both local managers and policy makers committed to ensure conservation of natural resources and sustainable development targets. In this context, emergy accounting is used to assess the donor-side value of natural capital and the environmental cost sustained for the exploitation of ecosystem services in Mediterranean MPAs.

Using emergy to evaluate biodiversity

Ana Carolina Valerio Nadalini1, Ednildo Andrade Torres2, Ricardo De Araujo Kalid3

1Federal University of Bahia (CIENAM-UFBA), Brazil 2Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil

3Federal University of South of Bahia (UFSB), Brazil

The goal of this paper is to verify the possibility of ecosystem services (ES) valuation using the emergy synthesis, using social, economic and environmental variables. Ecosystem services are considered as a complement of emergy flows within the ecosystem and are identified according to the benefits and services provided by ecosystems to society. For the application of the emergent indices, this study classifies ES´s in the four categories defined by MEA (2005): provision services; regulatory services; cultural services and support services. The ES valuation is done through the reconciliation of values obtained from ecological economy with the emergy analysis, based on the methodology proposed by Coscieme et al. (2011), where the values of different biomes were calculated and translated into money by means of a specific “environmental” emergy-to-money conversion factor given by the ratio of the renewable emergy supporting the entire biosphere (emergy baseline) to the value of the world ES previously proposed by Costanza et al (1997) and updated in this study to TEEB (2012) and Costanza et al. (2014). Through the ratio between the emergent flow (Y) and the “environmental” Emergy/Money Ratio one can determine the monetary value of the ecosystem studied. The values found are easier for comparison and comprehension of the general public, specifically for managers who make decisions that involve areas with natural resources where only economic benefits are usually considered at the expense of the socio-environmental loss in the affected region.


Development of a new principle framework for non-monetary

accounting of ecosystem services

Qing Yang1, Gengyuan Liu1,2, Marco Casazza3, Biagio F. Giannetti1,4

1 State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, China

2 Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing, China

3 Dept. of Science and Technologies, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy 4 Laboratório de Produção e Meio Ambiente, Programa de Pós-Graduação em

Engenharia de Produção, Universidade Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil

Governments use money-based accounting systems of national economies to calculate macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product, gross national product, per capita income, etc. In the previous studies, also in response to a perceived lack of comprehensiveness of such accounting systems, more attention was placed on the economic use and evaluation of the ecosystems. Methods for calculating the value of ecological services are attracting interest as an instrument to interpret nonmonetary values of the environment into real monetary thinking. This study summarizes the theoretical basis of environmental accounting based on ecological thermodynamics and points out the reinterpretation of socio-economic systems from the perspective of donors. Emergy, the total amount of solar equivalent energy which is invested by the environment in support of a given process, is suggested as a scientific measure of the direct and indirect work performed by the biosphere. Within such a “donor-side” perspective, the value of a resource relies on the effort which is needed for its production and delivery over a “trial and error” process that ensures optimization of resource use. This study aims to establish non-monetary accounting principle framework on ecosystem services (ES), including ES related to storage and flow, ES for reducing loss and ES with existence value. Emergy priority allocation scheme and total ES value additivity rules have been discussed. In this paper, China is selected as the study case based on the improvement of the recent emergy methods. The difference between the monetary and nonmonetary of ecological service function lies in the transfer of environmental ethic from anthropocentric to ecocentric. This study suggests both monetary and nonmonetary accounting approaches should be used to quantitatively account for natural services, similar to the approach used in financial accounting, uses emergy to record environmental liabilities and establishes a monetized balance sheet to explain the existence value and the contribution of the environment to economic production.


10:25 – 12:30 Session 11 - Nations & International Trade

Emergy based analysis of China’s energy supply security

Hongfang Lu1, Hongxiao Liu1, Jun Wang1, Daniel E. Campbell2, Hai Ren1

1Key Laboratory of Vegetation Restoration and Management of Degraded Ecosystems, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

Guangzhou, China 2US EPA, Office of Research and Development, National Health and

Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecology Division, Narragansett, RI, USA

Energy consumption is one of the key driving forces of national economic development. China is currently the second-largest economy and the largest energy consuming country in the world, which has accounted for nearly three quarters of world energy demand growth in recent years, and its share of global energy consumption is expected to continue increasing. Thus, the security of China’s energy supply is not only an issue of concern for China, but also affects the international energy market and global economic development. Based on the framework first proposed by Sovacool and Brown in 2010, an emergy-based evaluation index system was developed and applied to quantify the dynamics of energy supply security for China during the past two decades. This framework considers 4 aspects of the problem, i.e. availability, affordability, consumption efficiency, and environmental stewardship. The results showed that the diversity of emergy based primary energy consumption increased 3.8 times in the past 63 years from 0.46 in 1953 to 1976 in 2016. With the changing mix of primary energy consumption during this time, the UEV of the total primary energy used in China increased 11% from 5.19E4 sej/J in 1953 to 5.7E4 sej/J in 2016. Crude oil accounted for the largest share of imported fossil fuels during the study period. The Shannon-Wiener Index (SWI) of emergy-based crude oil imports was higher than that of other energy sources during the whole study period, and it increased from 2.6 in 1992 to 4.0 in 2004, and has remained relatively constant at that level after that. The imported quantities of coal and LNG increased quickly after 2000, but the SWI of both of them were was less than 2.87 and showed large fluctuations. The mean EERs of imported crude oil, coal and LNG were, respectively, 0.37, 0.17 and 0.23, which means China dramatically benefited from fossil fuel imports due to the relatively low price of the fuels compared with their biophysical donor value. The energy efficiency in China has rapidly increased most of the time after 1977, with a 5-year period of stagnation from 2000 to 2005. Rapid economic development in China was been accompanied by severe deflation, thus, after removing the noise of deflation, the rate of increase of China’s energy efficiency is much less. Although the GHG (mostly CO2) emissions in China have increased over 9 times in the t 45 years since 1970, the GHGs emissions per unit of Emergy of primary energy consumption has decreased 39%.


Regional disparities in the Chinese Economy. An emergy evaluation of

provincial international trade.

Tian Xu1,3, Yong Geng1, Silvio Viglia3, Raimund Bleischwitz5, Elvira Buonocore3, Sergio Ulgiati3,4

1School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

2School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ., Shanghai, China 3Department of Sciences and Technologies, Parthenope Univ. of Naples, Italy

4School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China 5Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London, United Kingdom

Due to different resource endowment, geographical features, culture and population size, different regions are facing different challenges and therefore need to adopt different strategies toward sustainable development. China’s Eastern, Central and Western provinces are taking different policies on international trade in order to boost their economy. This paper tries to investigate what extent a province receives a trade advantage and the corresponding environmental resource flows by employing an emergy accounting method for the period of 1993-2012. Three emergy trade indicators (Exchange Emergy Ratio, Emergy Benefit Ratio and Opportunity Ratio) were calculated along with conventional monetary indicators, to describe the benefits and losses in trade over the investigated period. The results show that the total trade volume of each province increased, but the trajectory of growth has a clear regional disparity. Eastern provinces gained economic advantages during the investigated period, while western provinces did not. The key finding is that benefits in terms of resource availability and work potential are not always in line with monetary advantages. Foreign trade partners received more advantages than their Chinese counterparts although Eastern Chinese provinces performed much better that both Central and Western Chinese provinces. Policy suggestions are then raised so that more sustainable trade policies can be prepared by considering the local realities.

Urban Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Indicator in Taiwan: An emergy approach

Ying-Chen Lin, Pei-Te Chiueh, Shang-Lien Lo

Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University

After the Bonn2011 Conference, the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus has became the one of the most popular research topics of the world. The complex interactions between FEW are the essential pillars for the development of sustainability. In addition, the global demands for the FEW will continually increase due to the urban growth by 2050, which also bring out the challenges


to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations in 2015. In order to clarify the demands for FEW within urban area, it is important to develop a way or indicators to comprehensively measure the real wealth for citizens from food, energy, and water. Based on the ecological energetic theory, all flows of materials, includes food, energy and water, can be regarded as energy flows. The emergy approach integrates both the natural and the socio-economic environmental factors, which can transform the different kinds of energy flows into the same unit, "solar equivalent joules (seJ)" by using the concept of "transformity". This study aims to investigate the relationships between the changes of the FEW consumption and the urbanization in the last three decades (1996-2016) in Taiwan by using the new emergy indicators, and takes the six municipalities - Taipei City (TPC), New Taipei City (NTP), Taoyuan City (TYC), Taichung City (TCC), Tainan City (TNC), and Kaohsiung City (KHC), as the case study areas. The results of this study can serve as the valuable guidelines for the city governments to review the policies and strategies for encouraging citizens to live a sustainable lifestyle in the future.

Updates of National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V3.0)

Gengyuan Liu1,2, Jiamin Pan1, Xueqi Wang1, Hao Zhang1, Sharlynn Sweeney3, Sergio Ulgiati4, Mark T. Brown3

1State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

2Beijing Engineering Research Center for Watershed Environmental Restoration & Integrated Ecological Regulation, Beijing 100875, China

3Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA 4Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples,

Centro Direzionale, Isola C4, 80143 Naples, Italy

The National Environmental Accounting Database (NEAD V1.0), proposed by S. Sweeney et al. (2007) based on a Global Emergy Database for Standardized National Emergy Synthesis, compiles detailed information for over 150 countries for the full array of resources that underlie economies, including environmental flows (sunlight, rainfall), natural capital stocks (soil, water, forests, fish), mined materials (metals, fuels) and economically transformed goods and services (agricultural commodities, manufactured goods, services). NEAD V2.0 with additional years 2004 and 2008, and more countries was produced in 2012. Along with the coming of new century, it is urgent to update the database after 10 years based on the fast-developed raw global environmental database and the replacements of the nations and regions. GIS grid coverages for renewable flows, the processes of updating raw data necessary for tabular synthesis, filtrating energy conversion rates, replaced international trade statistics, and latest Unit Emergy Values (UEVs) for translating physical flows to emergy units


have been discussed and updated. This calculation methods framework incorporates a standardized template within which primary flows are calculated and aggregated into the emergy summary flows and indices. Meanwhile, the new NEAD V3.0 and visual interface, based on this framework, have been designed. User friendly interface is provided to upload personal research data and share to other users. NEAD V3.0 will strengthen the power and credibility of comparative national emergy analysis.

The SDGs initiative and the emergy viewpoint

Federico M. Pulselli1, Massimo Gigliotti1, Luca Coscieme2, Nicoletta Patrizi1, Michela Marchi1, Simone Bastianoni1

1Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena, Siena, Italy 2 School of Natural Sciences, Dept. Of Zoology, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

The UN Agenda 2030 i.e. the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) initiative is acknowledged as one essential step towards the sustainability of nations,. Inspired by the need to identify and solve urgent problems at the global level, the SDGs initiative consistently fosters universality (every nation and every sector), integration (interconnection of goals) and transformation (involving changes in our life). These hard tasks have implied a complicated “mosaic-like” structure, whose construction has been difficult and rather fragmented. Implementation refers the 17 Goals to 169 targets and about 240 indicators which have been thought for the global/country level but sometimes neglecting connections and causal relations. We investigate if emergy can provide further and complementary information to the SDGs framework, and help achieve the task. The flow-based essence of emergy, that, by definition, connects the elements of a system, can complement the SDGs reductionist view. Some cases will be illustrated, such as the measure of resource consumption and the nexus among water, energy and food in some countries. More in general, we will adopt an Input-State-Output framework to establish the range and consistency of the SDGs to reflect the state of the world in comparison with emergy.

PRESENTER CONTACT INFORMATION

Thomas Abel Human Development, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan [email protected]

Sam Arden Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida [email protected]

Simone Bastianoni Dept. of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of Siena, Siena, Italy [email protected]

Angel A. Bayod-Rújula CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Zaragoza. Spain [email protected]

Bhavik Bakshi Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Ohio State University [email protected]

Eldon C. Blancher II Sustainable Ecosystem Restoration, LLC, Mobile, AL, USA [email protected]

Amanda Bligh Dept. of Mechanical, Industrial and Systems Engineering, Univ. of Rhode Island [email protected]

Mark T. Brown Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida [email protected]

Daniel Campbell US EPA, Office of Research & Development, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, Atlantic Ecologic Division, Narragansett, RI USA [email protected]

Elliott Campbell Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Annapolis, Maryland, [email protected]

Hao-Wei Chiu Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, Taiwan [email protected]

Mark P.A. Ciotola San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA [email protected] Dennis Collins Retired, University of Puerto Rico- Mayaguez [email protected]

Fabiana Corcelli Dept. of Science & Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Naples, Italy [email protected]

Xiaobin Dong State Key Lab of Earth Surface Processes & Resource Ecology, College of Resources Sci. & Technology, Beijing Normal Univ., Beijing, China [email protected]

Pier Paolo Franzese Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy [email protected]

Corrado Giannantoni Ex-ENEA Researcher & Consultant, Duchenne Parent Project Onlus, Rome, Italy [email protected]; [email protected]

Francesco Gonella Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campus Scientifico, edificio ALFA, Venezia-Mestre, Italy [email protected]

Po-Ju Huang Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, Taiwan [email protected]

Shu-Li Huang Graduate Inst. of Urban Planning, National Taipei Univ., New Taipei City, Taiwan [email protected]

Ayodh Vasant Kamath PennDesign, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA [email protected]

Andres Kamp Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark [email protected]

Naomi Keena Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. New York, NY [email protected]

Naryeong Kim Dept. of Ecological Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, Korea [email protected]

Dong Joo Lee Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida; Department of Ecological Engineering, Pukyong National University, Korea [email protected]

Eric Lee A-sociated Press, just a personal blog, Tucson, AZ [email protected]

Sue Lee Citizen activist, Tucson, AZ [email protected]

Seungjun Lee Korea Environment Institute, Sejong, Republic of Korea [email protected]

Ying-Chieh Lee Lee-Ming Institute of Technology, Taishan, Taiwan [email protected]

Ying-Chen Lin Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taiwan [email protected]

Gengyuan Liu School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China [email protected], [email protected]

Jin-e Liu School of Environment, Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing Normal University & Jiangsu Engineering Lab of Water and Soil Eco-remediation, Nanjing, China [email protected]

Hongfang Lu South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China [email protected]

Xin (Cissy) Ma Sustainable Technology Division, National Risk Management Research Laboratory, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Cincinnati, Ohio [email protected]

Matteo Maccanti Ecodynamics Group, University of Siena, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

Amaya Martínez-Gracia CIRCE Institute – Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Univ. of Zaragoza. Spain [email protected]

Antonino Marvuglia Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Environmental Research and Innovation (ERIN) department, Belvaux, Luxembourg [email protected]

Peter May Biohabitats, Inc. and University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD [email protected], [email protected]

Robert McDougall School of Environmental and Rural Sciences, University of New England Armidale, New South Wales, Australia [email protected]

Fabiana Morandi Dept. of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Siena, Italy [email protected]

Ana Carolina Valerio Nadalini Federal University of Bahia (CIENAM-UFBA), Brazil [email protected]

Mariana Oliveira Ecological Engineering Lab., University of Campinas, SP, Brazil [email protected]

Hanne Østergård Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark [email protected]

Jiamin Pan State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China [email protected]

Naae Park Department of Ecological Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, Republic of Korea [email protected]

Bernard C. Patten Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA [email protected]

Flavio Picone Dept. of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy CoNISMa, Roma, Italy [email protected]

Federico M. Pulselli Dept. of Physical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Siena, Italy [email protected]

Marco Raugei Faculty of Technology, Design and Environment, Oxford Brookes Univ., UK [email protected]

Torbjörn Rydberg Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences [email protected]

Kaveh Samiei Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture, College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA [email protected]

Remo Santagata Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy [email protected]

Sofia Spagnolo Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Campus Scientifico, Venezia-Mestre, Italy [email protected]

Sharlynn Sweeney Center for Environmental Policy, University of Florida [email protected]

Shoujuan Tang State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University [email protected]

Ranjani B. Theregowda National Research Council Research Fellow [email protected] Len Troncale Past President, ISSS, Emeritus Prof. & Past Chair, Biological Sciences California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA [email protected]

Sergio Ulgiati Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Parthenope Univ. of Naples, Naples, Italy [email protected]

Silvio Viglia Department of Science and Technology, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy. [email protected]

Xueqi Wang State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China [email protected]

Stuart Whipple Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA [email protected]

Tian Xu School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ., Shanghai, China [email protected]

Qing Yang State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, China [email protected]

Hao Zhang State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China [email protected]

Xiangping Zhang Yellow River Institute of Hydraulic Research, Zhengzhou, China [email protected]

Elizabeth K. Zinecker MEES Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD [email protected]

Map of general layout of the event sites

Betty Odum’s

2106 NW 9th Ave

Reitz Union: Conference

Holiday Inn

Phelps Lab Center for

Environmental Policy

Map of campus sites

Reitz Union

Meeting

Rooms

Ustler Hall

The walk to poster

session from Reitz

Phelps Lab (CEP)

Party hosted by Mark Brown & Carol Binello 6:00pm, Saturday, January 27th

(map link on EmergySystems website)

SOME GAINESVILLE RESTAURANTS (*recommended) Downtown Gainesville: **Crane Ramen – Japanese-style ramen noodle bowls and appetizers, 16 Southwest 1st Avenue (352) 727-7422 **Alpin – French bistro/café, open very late, great atmosphere, sandwiches, salads, soup, great variety of wine and beer by the glass ** The Top - Creative, varied menu, good beer selection, funky, eclectic atmosphere. Good value. Very popular/crowed at times. Serves food until 1am. 30 North Main Street. **Dragonfly – Trendy atmosphere specializing in sushi and saki. Reservations recommended. 201 SE 2nd Avenue. (352)371-3359 *Emiliano’s Café – Caribbean restaurant with great tapas & brunch. Great outdoor seating. 7 SE First Ave. (352)375-7381 ** Manuel’s Vintage Room – Fine dining – Italian food and fine wine from around the world. 6 S. Main St. (352) 375-7372 Mark’s US Prime – Fine dining. Expensive. Great steaks and wide variety menu. 201 SE 2nd Ave. (352) 336-0077 Maude's Classic Café – Indoor and outdoor favorite of students. Coffee and desserts. 101 SE 2nd Pl. (352)336-9646 Paramount Grill – Gourmet eclectic international menu. More expensive. 12 SW 1st Ave. (352)378-3398 Starbucks – Coffee. 207 SE 1st St. (352)374-8227 ** Volta - great hand poured coffees, gourmet teas, desserts, modern coffehouse, wireless. Open 8am-9pm(?). 48 SW 2nd Street Walking Distance from Campus & Holiday Inn-University Centre (Mid-Town): * El Indio – Fresh and quick Mexican take out. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. 407 NW 13th St. (352) 377-5828 *Gyro Plus – Great vegetarian menu plus gyros, falafels, hummus, etc. Good homemade desserts. 1011 W University Ave. (352)336-5323 * Karma Cream – Organic ice cream, coffee, desserts, sandwiches, beer. 607 W University Ave. (352) 505-6566 Bagels & Noodles – Breakfast, bagels, Vietnamese food for lunch and dinner. 1244 W. University Ave. Bistro 1245 – Good food, including vegetarian options, and great wine selections. 1245 W University Ave. (352)376-0000 Chipotle Mexican Grill – Fast food. Burritos and tacos. 1421 W. University Avenue. (352) 372-5330 Krispy Kreme Doughnuts – Doughnuts, coffee. 310 N.W. 13th Street. (352) 377-0052. * Leonardo’s 706 – Italian/creative cuisine restaurant, nice atmosphere, great food and wine selections. Good vegetarian options. 706 W University Ave.(352)378-2001.

* Leonardo's Pizza by the Slice – A popular pizza/pasta/coffee place. Good vegetarian/vegan options. 1245 W University Ave. (352)375-2007. Piesano’s – bottom floor of Holiday Inn, pizza, pasta, beer, wine. *Reggae Shack Café – Caribbean. Great vegetarian options in a café with lots of character. 619 W. University Avenue. (352) 377-5464. Swamp Restaurant – Wide variety menu – something for everyone. Inside and outside dining. Across from campus. 1642 W. University Ave. (352) 377-9267. Tatu – Sushi and Asian fusion cuisine. Across from campus. 1702 W. University Avenue. (352) 371-1700 On SW 13th Street between campus and Paramount Hotel: *Blue Gill – One of the higher quality options in the area. Creative Southern/comfort food, lunch & dinner. Can be pricey at dinner. 1310 SW 13th Street. *Chop Stix Cafe – Great Pan-Asian food at low prices. Great for vegetarians and meat eaters alike. 3500 SW 13th St. (352)367-0003. La Familia Cuban Sandwich Shop – 1209 SW 16th Avenue (352) 378-2257. Subway – Hot and cold sandwiches. 1805 SW 13th St. (352) 371-0311. *La Tienda Latina Restaurante Market – Groceries from Mexico, fresh baked sweetbreads, authentic Mexican dishes and soups. 2204 SW 13th St. (352)367-0022. Steak N Shake – Classic diner food. 1610 SW 13th St. (352)376-0588. Taxi Services A1 Yellow Cab (352)374-9696 Best Way Cab Company (352)367-8222 Gainesville Cab (352)371-1515 Unimet Taxicab Co. (352)380-0830

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10th biennial emergy research conference schedule · 10th biennial emergy research conference...

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