Evaluation of Environmental Life Cycle Approaches for Policy and Decision Making Support in Micro and Macro Level Applications

The European Commission (EC) has strengthened environmental and sustainability oriented policies and strategies by introducing Life Cycle Thinking. Amongst others, this is a key consideration in the Integrated Product Policy Communication, the two Thematic Strategies on the Sustainable Use of Natural Resources and on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste, as well as in the Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP)/Sustainable Industry Policy (SIP) Action Plan. Reliable and scientifically robust life cycle methods are required to support the implementation, monitoring and assessment needs of these strategies and associated policies. This project analyses different life-cycle methods and provides an evaluation of their current suitability for assessing environmental impacts in micro level and macro level situations.JRC.DDG.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Life Cycle Assessment of Pavements: A Critical Review of Existing Literature and Research

This report provides a critical review of existing literature and modeling tools related to life-cycle assessment (LCA) applied to pavements. The review finds that pavement LCA is an expanding but still limited research topic in the literature, and that the existing body of work exhibits methodological deficiencies and incompatibilities that serve as barriers to the widespread utilization of LCA by pavement engineers and policy makers. This review identifies five key issues in the current body of work: inconsistent functional units, improper system boundaries, imbalanced data for asphalt and cement, use of limited inventory and impact assessment categories, and poor overall utility. This review also identifies common data and modeling gaps in pavement LCAs that should be addressed in future work. These gaps include: the use phase (rolling resistance, albedo, carbonation, lighting, leachate, and tire wear and emissions), asphalt fumes, feedstock energy of bitumen, traffic delay, the maintenance phase, and the end-of-life phase. This review concludes with a comprehensive list of recommendations for future research, which shed light on where improvements in knowledge can be made that will benefit the accuracy and comprehensiveness of pavement LCAs moving forward

What are the energy and greenhouse gas benefits of repurposing non-residential buildings into apartments?

This study examines the potential strategies for reducing embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions through adaptive reuse of non-residential buildings for residential purposes, as compared to new construction of apartment buildings. Such an approach can address housing crises in urban areas with an abundance of underutilized non-residential buildings, promoting sustainable housing growth. A comprehensive assessment of repurposing in California reveals approximately 510 million m² of floor space across 230,000 non-residential buildings in the current building stock. The potential reduction in embodied energy and CO2eq emissions ranges from 0.14 to 1.4 billion GJ and 5.0–70 million metric tons for the state, respectively, contingent upon the percentage of repurposed floor space (10–100%) and adaptive reuse scenario (retaining structural components and façade or solely the structure). A repurposed building avoids about 56% of embodied energy, 34-48% of CO2 eq emissions, and 72% of materials by mass compared to building a new apartment building. However, various technical, financial, and regulatory challenges may hinder emissions reductions, necessitating proactive policy measures. Cities can potentially expedite the process by streamlining approvals for mixed-use adaptive reuse projects involving both commercial and residential spaces

Potential Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions from Optimizing Urban Transit Networks

Public transit systems with efficient designs and operating plans can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to low-occupancy transportation modes, but many current transit systems have not been designed to reduce environmental impacts. This motivates the study of the benefits of design and operational approaches for reducing the environmental impacts of transit systems. For example, transit agencies may replace level-of-service (LOS) by vehicle miles traveled (VMT) as a criterion in evaluating design and operational changes. Previous studies have demonstrated in an idealized singletechnology transit system the potential of reducing GHG emissions by lowering the transit level-of-service (LOS) provided to the users. In this research, we extend the analysis to account for a more realistic case: a transit system with a hierarchical structure (trunk and feeder lines) providing service to a city where demand is elastic. By considering the interactions between the trunk and the feeder systems, the study provides a quantitative basis for designing and operating integrated urban transit systems that can reduce GHG emissions and costs to both transit users and agencies. The study shows that highly elastic transit demand may cancel emission reduction potentials resulting from lowering LOS, due to demand shifts to lower occupancy vehicles, causing unintended consequences. However, for mass transit modes, these potentials are still significant. Transit networks with buses, bus rapid transit or light rail as trunk modes should be designed and operated near the cost-optimal point when the demand is highly elastic, while this is not required for metro. We also find that the potential for unintended consequences increases with the size of the city. The results are robust to uncertainties in the costs and emissions parameters. The study also includes a discussion of a current transit system. Since many current transit systems have not yet been optimally designed, it should be possible to reduce their GHG emissions without sacrificing the LOS. A case study of the MUNI bus system in San Francisco is used to validate this conjecture. The analysis shows that reductions in GHG emissions can be achieved when societal costs are reduced simultaneously. The cost-optimal MUNI bus system has a societal cost of 0.15 billion $/year and emits 1680 metric tons of greenhouse gases. These figures only amount to about half of the cost and a third of the emissions in the current MUNI bus system. The optimal system has a lower spatial availability but a higher temporal availability of bus service than the current system, which highlights the potential benefits of providing more frequent express bus services

Myoblast Migration and Directional Persistence Affected by Syndecan-4-Mediated Tiam-1 Expression and Distribution

Skeletal muscle is constantly renewed in response to injury, exercise, or muscle diseases. Muscle stem cells, also known as satellite cells, are stimulated by local damage to proliferate extensively and form myoblasts that then migrate, differentiate, and fuse to form muscle fibers. The transmembrane heparan sulfate proteoglycan syndecan-4 plays multiple roles in signal transduction processes, such as regulating the activity of the small GTPase Rac1 (Ras-related C3 botulinum toxin substrate 1) by binding and inhibiting the activity of Tiam1 (T-lymphoma invasion and metastasis-1), a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rac1. The Rac1-mediated actin remodeling is required for cell migration. Syndecan-4 knockout mice cannot regenerate injured muscle; however, the detailed underlying mechanism is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that shRNA-mediated knockdown of syndecan-4 decreases the random migration of mouse myoblasts during live-cell microscopy. Treatment with the Rac1 inhibitor NSC23766 did not restore the migration capacity of syndecan-4 silenced cells; in fact, it was further reduced. Syndecan-4 knockdown decreased the directional persistence of migration, abrogated the polarized, asymmetric distribution of Tiam1, and reduced the total Tiam1 level of the cells. Syndecan-4 affects myoblast migration via its role in expression and localization of Tiam1; this finding may facilitate greater understanding of the essential role of syndecan-4 in the development and regeneration of skeletal muscle

Equity Assessment of Transportation Should Incorporate Materials, Supply Chains, and Targeted Mitigation Policies

California must build, operate, and maintain transportation infrastructure while ensuring that the health of communities and the planet are not compromised. In addition to vehicleemissions, supply chain inputs and energy use from constructing and maintaining transportation projects (e.g., roads, airports, bridges) result in pollution that contributes to climate change and impacts the health of local communities. Project-specific air and noise pollution can further burden vulnerable populations. By assessing transportation projects using a life-cycle perspective, all relevant emission sources and activities from raw material production, supply chain logistics, construction, operation, maintenance, and end-of-life phases of a project can be analyzed and mitigated

Moving Beyond the Colors: The Full Life-Cycle Emissions of Hydrogen Production Pathways for California

There is growing interest in the use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel but the environmental benefits of using hydrogen depend critically on how it is produced and distributed. Leading alternatives to using fossil natural gas to make hydrogen through the conventional method of steam methane reforming include using electrolyzers to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the use of biogas as an alternative feedstock to fossil natural gas. This report examines the latest carbon intensity (CI) estimates for these and various other hydrogen production processes, adding important nuances to the general “colors of hydrogen” scheme that has been used in recent years. CI values for hydrogen production can vary widely both within and across hydrogen production pathways. The lowest CI pathways use biomass or biogas as a feedstock, and solar or wind power. The report also analyses jobs creation from new hydrogen production facilities and shows that these benefits can be significant for large-scale facilities based on either future biomass/biogas-to-hydrogen or solar-hydrogen production technologies. Recommendations include setting stricter goals for the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program to continue to reduce the carbon footprint of California’s transportation fuels

Vitrifikacija mleča grgeča (perca fluviatilis)

Vitrifikacija je proces dovođenja vode ili rastvora u čvrsto stanje, odnosno u amorfno ili staklasto stanje koje može da se dostigne veoma brzom hlađenjem (106-1010 °C/s). Nedavno je objavljeno nekoliko istraživanja o vitrifikaciji mleča različitih vrsta riba, međutim nema dostupnih informacija o vitrifikaciji mleča grgeča (Perca fluviatilis). Mužjaci grgeča su uzorkovani 6 dana posle hormonske injekcije (250 IU kg-1 hCG). Evaluirana je pokretljivost spermatozoida pomoću sistema kompjuterske analize sperme CASA. Za process vitrifikacije mleč je razblažen modifikovanim Tanaka ekstenderom na finalni odnos 1:5 (sa krioprotektantima). Posle preliminarnih testova sa kombinacijom metanola i propilen glikola (PG) u različitim koncentracijama, odlučeno je da se koristi 15% metanola i 15 % PG (ukupno 30% krioprotektanata). Suspenzija mleča je ubačena direktno u tečni azot bez prethodnog hlađenja u njegovoj pari. Za sve eksperimente vitrifikacije za hlađenje su korišćene cevčice Cryotop (Kitazato-Dibimed, za 2 µl rastvora). Za fertilizacioni test su prikupljena jaja ženki grgeča. Vitrifikovane Cryotop cevčice otopljene su direktno u 10 µl rastvora za aktivaciju (50 mm NaCl) u petri šoljama koje su sadržale jaja. Svež mleč služio je za kontrolu. Oplođena jaja su inkubirana u plivajućem sistemu. Izvedena su 3 ogleda da bi se utvrdio odgovarajući broj cevčica Cryotop za svaku seriju jaja: 1, 6 i 18 cevčica Cryotop je isprobano za svaku seriju jajnih ćelija. U 2 µl rastvora mleča jedne Cryotop cevčice bilo je oko 0,33 µl mleča. Na osnovu stepena oplođenja u tri ogleda može se zaključiti da povećanje broja Cryotop cevčica pojačava stepen oplođenja. Dalja sitraživanja su neophodna da bi se razvio metod vitrifikacije sa većim preživljavanjem larvi posle oplođenja vitrifikovanim mlečom. Takođe je potrebno ispitati stepen izvaljenih embriona iz ogleda sa vitrifikovanim mlečom, kao i potencijalni uticaj vitrifikacije na larve, pre svega na deformitete i morfološke promene

Environmental analysis of milling machine tool use in various manufacturing environments

A life-cycle energy consumption analysis of a Bridgeport manual mill and a Mori Seiki DuraVertical 5060 has been conducted. The use phase incorporated three manufacturing environments: a community shop, a job shop, and a commercial facility. The CO2-equivalent emissions were presented per machined part. While the use phase comprised the majority of the overall emissions, the manufacturing phase emissions were significant especially for the job shop, which is not as efficient as the other facilities due to its inherent need for flexibility. Since the Mori Seiki is heavier, the manufacturing phase of this machine tool had a greater impact on emissions than the Bridgeport. Transportation was small relative to the use phase, which was dominated by cutting, HVAC, and lighting. These results highlight areas for energy reductions in machine tool design as well as the importance of facility type to the manufacture of any product