Economic sustainability indicators

Behrens A (2004) Environmental policy instruments for dematerialisation of the European Union. SERI Background Papers, No 7. Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Vienna EUROSTAT (2001) Economy-wide material flow accounts and derived indicators. A methodological guide. Statistical Office of the European Union, Luxembourg Giljum S (2006) Material flow-based indicators for evaluation of eco-efficiency and dematerialisation policies. In Lawn P (ed) Sustainability indicators in Ecological Economics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham... 

Pannell, D.J. and Glenn, N.A. 2000. A framework for the economic evaluation and selection of sustainability indicators in agriculture. Ecological Economics 33(1) 135-149. 

Sustainability is important in the context of industry sectors, products, process technologies, and individual process plants. In assessing performance achievement in sustainability, there is a need for suitable sustainability indicators to measure progress in environmental, economic, and social performance. 

Economic performance is the most important attribute for process industries when evaluating a process design in a commercial setting. Although the emergence of the concept design for sustainabdity has occurred, economic feasibdity is stiU one of the most fundamental indicators for the stakeholders to determine the existence and continuation of a product development. Therefore a new or current process must be economically sustainable [13]. Here three indicators will be used to describe the economic performance of the fermentation process operation. 

In the last case we select Cp = 68 kg/m as the setpoint for the closed-loop scenario, which is slightly higher than the setpoint of 63 kg/m in case 3. The concentration and Djjj profiles for the closed-loop case are shown in Fig. 5.15, in which Din takes the steady-state value of 0.15 h, a lower value than the steady state of 0.18 h in case 3. Fig. 5.16 depicts the concentrations of key component, biomass, substrate, and product for the open-loop case with the same input value. When comparing to the open-loop case, the closed-loop scenario shows once again improvement in concentration of product. Finally, Fig. 5.17 shows that in this case the sustainability indicators in environmental and economic aspects have achieved improvement after the advanced control implementation. 

If utilities are generated inside the facility, such as cooling water, the capital cost for outside the battery limits facilities are evaluated by APEA. Using the specified indirect cost, discount rate, tax, and interest, the discounted cash flow and the economic indicators are generated by APEA with the method described in Section Economic Sustainability Analysis. Parameters for economic evaluations and prices of the raw materials and products are shown in Table 6.8. Utility costs for electricity, steam, and... 

Note that the quality of sustainability assessment relies largely on the comprehensiveness of the sustainability indicators used and data availability and accuracy. Thus it is imperatively important that an electroplating organization select a set of sustainability indicators suitable for assessing economic, environmental, and social sustainability where data and information are accessible and the uncertainties associated with them are manageable. 

Team Learning. We measure the sustainability performance of our operations and products using environmental, social and economic performance indicators and related targets. We set high ethical and professional standards ... 

A generally accepted division of sustainability is to divide it into economic, environmental, and social sustainability. From a company s point of view, corporate responsibility is the term used to cover these aspects. Safety and health are important parts of corporate responsibility which is integral for social sustainability. Therefore, workers safety and health are among the sustainability indicators used (Al-Sharrah et al., 2010). 

The conditions used industrially for the Haber process are those that sustain the economic viability of its manufacture. Out of necessity, a high yield in a long time must be balanced against a low yield in a shorter time, whilst minimising energy costs. The conditions employed indicate a compromise between these opposing outcomes, as the graphs illustrate. 

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization [39-41] and Ausubel and Sladovich [4] emphasize the importance of cleaner production, pollution prevention, waste minimization, sustainable development, zero emission, materials substimtion, dematerialization, decarbonization, functional economic analysis, and IE indicators. These ways and means for analysis and design of industrial ecology are described separately herein. 

A similar method proposed by Hoffmann [26] involves analyzing process alternatives based on two indices. The total armuabzed profit per service unit (TAPPS) and material intensity per service unit (MIPS) are calculated as economic and environmental factors, respectively. TAPPS is used to calculate the maximum profit per unit of product produced. MIPS is used to calculate the number of input and output streams in a process. MIPS was used based on the knowledge that a global reduction in material streams (solvents, reactants,) is necessary to lead toward sustainable development. TAPPS and MIPS are determined for several process alternatives, which are analyzed using a Pareto Chart for their feasibihty within a plant. However, MIPS does not account for the release of toxic solvents and reagents into the environment. Therefore it has been noted that it should be used in conjunction with LCA and other methods to avoid the use of highly toxic solvents and other raw materials [26]. 

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