Global environmental impact

Tilman D. Global environmental impacts of agricultural expansion The need for sustainable and efficient practices. P Natl Acad Sci USA. 1999 96 5995-6000. DOI 10.1073/pnas.96.11.5995... 

Although in principle stationary and transport-specific energy chains can be analysed, here the assessment of the latter is explained in more detail, and is then referred to as well-to-wheel (WTW) analysis. The primary focus of WTW analysis in Europe is on global environmental impact, i.e., greenhouse-gas emissions expressed as C02-equivalents. Other issues of interest are (a) primary energy demand (which equals resource utilisation), (b) local pollutant emissions and (c) full energy or fuel supply costs. Well-to-wheel analysis covers the entire fuel supply chain from feedstock extraction, feedstock transportation, fuel manufacturing and fuel distribution to fuel use in a vehicle. 

Tioxide uses the ICI Environmental Burden (EB) system to monitor environmental impact. Each emission to air or water is assigned to a group based on global environmental impact. Within each category the emission is assigned a factor that reflects its potency. 

An increased awareness of local and global environmental impacts of our current patterns of energy use. 

The global environmental impact (El) is the value that is generated for all the supply chain to carry out the process at industrial scale for the specific case of Ambrox production... 

Wiedmann, T., Lenzen, M., Turner, K., Barrett, J. (2007). Examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities — Part 2 review of input-output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade. Ecological Economics, 61(1) 15-26. 

The issues in these evaluations are safety as related to toxicity and flammability, environmental impact as related to the generation of volatile organic compounds and global warming, product performance as related to insulating properties, conformity to fire codes, and the like, cost and availability, and regulatory requirements. 

CBA relies heavily on the costs of environmental impacts. Some impacts may be easily expressed in monetary values, like crop loss or even increased morbidity among people. Others, like impact on biodiversity and the depletion of natural resources, are more difficult to describe in terms of monetary values. Large time scales and global impacts also complicate the methodology and confuse the understanding of the results. Some of the environmental consequences of today s activities appear only after several hundred or thousand yeats. Even low interest rates tend to diminish these types of impact, even if they are very large. 

Another problem of EGAs is that they are non-site-specific. The reasons for this lie in the fact that they include the whole life cycle of systems with resources which may originate in different countries and waste products and emissions which may distribute globally. They deal with factual inputs, outputs and the environmental impact potentials of the system under investigation on a global, and, in some cases, regional scale. Yet, they do not address the intrinsic risks resulting from the system itself. However, a combination with risk assessment methods can be used to close this gap. 

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