A preliminary assessment of the direct and indirect environmental support to the stability and sustainability of the urban system of Rome, Italy, was performed by means of the emergy synthesis approach. A raw inventory of mass and energy flows is firstly provided. Then raw data are converted into emergy flows driving the urban system. Finally, performance indicators are calculated. Emergy synth...

The theoretical framework andmethodology of a water ecological–economic system (WEES) assessment based on emergy synthesis are proposed in this paper. Through calculating ecological and economic inputs and outputs within and outside the complex system, this paper discusses the system’s economic situation, water resources development and system sustainability based on a series of emergy indicato...

Two Brazilian hydropower plants (Jupi a and Porto Primavera) located in the same watershed were explored in terms of the global resources needed to support these enterprises using a donor-side approach. Emergy theory and methods although commonly used by environmental scientists, may seem difficult to interpret for policy and decision-makers. Because of this, the possibility of transforming eme...

Several methods for regional environmental sustainability assessment have been proposed by the scientific community in the last few years, including two interesting resource-use based tools: Emergy Evaluation (Emergy) and Ecological Footprint Analysis (Footprint). Emergy Evaluation assesses all resources used, directly and indirectly, to support a region economy. Ecological Footprint Analysis e...

Making process systems engineering decisions that are ecologically conscious requires analysis of both industrial and ecological processes. Traditional methods in process engineering usually fall short of meeting this requirement due to considering the environment as secondary to economic objectives. Life cycle assessment and design methods have broadened the scope of traditional methods by con...

Exergy analysis is a thermodynamic approach used for analyzing and improving the efficiency of chemical and thermal processes. It has also been extended for life cycle assessment and sustainability evaluation of industrial products and processes. Although these extensions recognize the importance of capital and labor inputs and environmental impact, most of them ignore the crucial role that eco...

The current challenge concerning renewable energy sources resides in making them efficient and competitive in comparison with traditional ones. This assessment cannot neglect environmental performances. In particular, envisaging a sustainability perspective, this task must be accomplished from a wider, and then holistic, viewpoint. At this purpose authors identified emergy analysis as a valid a...

Time and spatial scales matter. Time series analyses have been proven to be useful in capturing tendencies of a country’s economical behavior. Large-scale evaluations at national scale are essential to highlight the basic parameters relevant to smaller scale case studies (regional, local, and sectors). Due to the importance and variability of those parameters or indicators over time and spatial...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a popular approach for considering the broader impacts of industrial products and processes. LCA relies on information about emissions throughout the life cycle and their impacts. For emerging technologies or at early stages of engineering design, such detailed information about emissions and their impact is usually not available. However, data about inputs to var...