Resource footprint

The key factor for sustainability of currently cultivated biomass is their resource footprint. This concerns not only the direct land use and transformation and amongst others the related use of fertilizers, pesticides, fuels, and water for farming, but also the mineral balance and quality of the soil (Cherubini, 2010a). 

So while the current industrial systems are split into three sectors namely food, bioenergy, and the chemical industry, these three sectors should come together and strive to valorize the used feedstock to the fullest to obtain the lowest resource footprint per (combined) output product(s). 

De Meester S, CaUewaert C, De Mol E, Van Langenhove H, Dewulf J. (2011). The resource footprint of biobased products a key issue in the sustainable development of biorefineries. Biofuels Bioprod Bioref, 5, 570-580. 

Many companies have used network optimisation models to help determine the shape of their distribution arrangements. Flowever, these models tend to optimise on a narrow definition of cost rather than taking into account the wider resource footprint that is created by the network. A new generation of network optimisation tools is now emerging which take account of the carbon footprint as well as the more conventional costs. 

A life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as life cycle analysis, of a product or process begins with an inventory of the energy and environmental flows associated with a product from "cradle to grave" and provides information on the raw materials used from the environment, energy resources consumed, and air, water, and solid waste emissions generated. GHGs and other wastes, sinks, and emissions may then be assessed (Sheehan et ah, 1998). The net GHG emissions calculated from an LCA are usually reported per imit of product or as the carbon footprint. 

FOOTPRINT (http //www.eu-footprint.org) is an EC 6th Framework Programme project aiming to develop computer tools to evaluate and reduce the risk of pesticides impacting on water resources in the EU SSPI-CT-2005-022704. 

Both the production of hydrogen from coal and the production of oil from unconventional resources (oil sands, oil shale, CTL, GTL) result in high C02 emissions and substantially increase the carbon footprint of fuel supply, unless the C02 is captured and stored. While the capture of C02 at a central point source is equally possible for unconventionals and centralised hydrogen production, in the case of hydrogen, a C02-free fuel results, unlike in the case of liquid hydrocarbon fuels. This is all the more important, as around 80% of the WTW C02 emissions result from the fuel use in the vehicles. If CCS were applied to hydrogen production from biomass, a net C02 removal from the atmosphere would even be achievable. 

In 1996, Dr. Wackernagel and his PhD supervisor Professor Rees published a unique monograph entitled Our Ecological Footprint [20]. This publication has made a dramatic impact on our thinking with regard to the intelligent management of our earth in terms of resources and emissions. 

It is debatable how much time we have or how much climate change we can live with. It is also debatable how much of our economic resources should be devoted to stabilizing and reversing mankind s growing carbon footprint. What is not debatable is that eventually we have to do it and we must not give reason to our grandchildren to ask "Why did you not act in time "... 

To use metabolic footprinting as a technique for high-throughput applications, benchmark spectra databases with identified peaks are required so that peak patterns obtained from MS or NMR analysis can be rapidly translated into relevant biological information. Common experimental procedures should, ideally, also be established for metabolite analysis [80] such as those existing in proteomics or transcriptomics. Nevertheless, the scientific community has only recently attempted to achieve these tasks. Several databases for identification of metabolomics signals by MS are now available, for instance, BIGG [81], BioCyc [82], MSlib [83], NIST [84], Metlin [85], and HMDB [86] databases. For a more comprehensive list of resources we refer to the review of Werner and coworkers [68]. 

The greenhouse-gas-neutral claim is the result of the combination of renewable-resource-based feedstock, along with the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs) backed by lifecycle assessment data. These RECs will serve as an offset to cover all of the emissions from the energy used for the production of NatureWorks PLA. The company will purchase certificates for projected 2006 production at its 140,000 tonne capacity manufacturing plant and 182,000 tonne capacity lactic acid plant in Blair, Neb., USA, as well as at its corporate offices in Minnetonka, Minn., USA. The purchase of renewable energy will allow NatureWorks to decrease its fossil fuel footprint by 68%. 

Each year, 6 million ha of land in the world undergo desertification, 17 million ha are deforested, and soil erosion exceeds soil formation by 26 billion tons. The ecological footprint is an accounting tool devised by William Rees to measure the productive land area needed to supply the resource consumption and waste assimilation of a given human population.23 Twenty percent of the world s population, largely in industrialized nations, consumes 80% of its resources. Some typical values of the productive land or water needed to support a person at a given material standard indefinitely are shown in Table 17.1. 

This formulation also applies to the situations where the footprint of inter-chip contacts is relatively big, e.g., 50 imx 50 pm (i.e. similar to that of flip-chip interconnection). Here inter-chip contacts should be considered as a coarsegrained resource and be assigned during the floorplanning stage. 

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