Martijn Rietbergen

University of Applied Science Utrecht

Circularity and recycling are gaining increased attention, yet the amount of recycled plastic applied in new products remains low. To accelerate its uptake by businesses, it will be useful to empirically investigate the barriers, enablers, needs and, ultimately, requirements to increase uptake of recycled plastic feedstock for the production of new...

Cities face enormous challenges regarding their sustainable development. Facing these challenges requires a range of competencies that enable professionals to in-depth analyse problems, envisage multiple futures, reflect on norms and on their own actions and beliefs and develop innovative solutions in a multidisciplinary approach. For students in H...

As part of the TRANSFORM-CE project, several (on line) workshops were organised to identify industry and business needs to use recycled materials in production processes. Seven in-depth works hops are done to achieve an inventory of the various barriers and enablers organisations face with the uptake of recycled plastic feedstock. This document com...

Urban regions are confronted with huge sustainability challenges. Their future depends to a large extent on our ability to promote sustainable urban development. However, sustainability challenges in cities are inherently complex and need integrated, multidisciplinary solutions. This textbook on Smart Sustainable Cities responds to that challenge b...

Circularity and recycling are gaining increased attention, yet the amount of recycled plastic applied in new products remains low. To accelerate uptake by businesses, it will be useful to empirically investigate the main barriers and enablers that organisations experience when using recycled plastic feedstock for the production of new plastic produ...

This report presents four regional studies on business support programmes for inclusion or understanding of circular economy objectives. This is part of the TRANSFORM-CE project, which aims to convert single-use plastic waste into valuable new products. Besides a general overview on national and regional level, the focus of the report is on a sele...

Within the involved Higher Education Institutes of the CARPE network, many research groups are working on sustainability related topics. However, the expertise of these research group are not fully exploited if it comes to acquiring new opportunities for externally funded research projects. This proposed project aims at developing a research commun...

This proposed project builds forth on the still ongoing ERASMUS+ capacity building project “Sustainability Alliance of Urban Networks in Asian Cities” (SAUNAC). SAUNAC, amongst others, aimed at designing, implementing and evaluating educational programs on Smart Sustainable Cities at Vietnamese universities. This new proposed project takes SAUNAC t...

This work deals with the design and development of the SSVC module, which is organised and implemented by European Higher Education Institutions in partnership with Vietnamese Universities. The reform of the Higher Education in Vietnam requires new pedagogical practices and methods which are used in the SSVC module. In addition, the process of desi...

In the Netherlands, the CO2 Performance Ladder has been introduced as an energy management programme to facilitate continuous energy efficiency and carbon performance improvement in non-industrial sectors. This paper addresses the question: ‘What is the impact of the CO2 Performance Ladder on improving energy and carbon management and reducing CO2...

Energy management and carbon accounting schemes are increasingly being adopted as a corporate response to climate change. These schemes often demand the setting of ambitious targets for the reduction of corporate greenhouse gas emissions. However, only limited empirical insight is available regarding the companies’ target-setting process and the au...

Green public procurement is often promoted as a tool to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions in the supply chains of public entities. However, only a limited number of studies has quantitatively assessed the environmental impacts of green public procurement schemes. The aim of this paper was to assess the potential impact of the CO2 Performance Ladd...

Industrial energy policies often require the setting of quantitative targets to reduce energy use and/or greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper a taxonomy has been developed for categorizing SMART industrial energy use or greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The taxonomy includes volume reduction targets, physical efficiency improvement targ...

In this paper we examine the implementation of a combined policy scheme that consists of a traditional instrument, the voluntary agreements (VAs), and an innovative one, the white certificates (WhC). The basic structure of this scheme is that energy suppliers who undertake an energy efficiency obligation under a white certificate scheme can make us...

Increased efficiency of energy demand is generally recognized as a very cost-effective strategy to reduce energy requirements and the related environmental impacts (e.g. the greenhouse effect). In order to improve energy efficiency the use of innovative market mechanisms, such as the White Certificates (WhC), has been proposed. The basic idea under...

Negotiated agreements — also often indicated as voluntary agreements — can be defined as ‘agreements between government and a sector in the national economy to facilitate voluntary action with a desirable social outcome, encouraged by the government. This action is undertaken by the participant, based on the participant’s self-interest’ (OECD, 1996...

Associated with economic development are increases in energy use and harmful emissions. Changes in total emissions can basically be decomposed into three components. The first component is associated with macroeconomic growth that, ceteris paribus, results in increased emissions. The second component is associated with structural change. As economi...

Thus far, the attention in this book was directed to stimulating the adoption of commercially available technologies. Such options may prove sufficient to reach short and medium term targets. Reaching longer term targets, like those for a period of 50 to 100 years ahead requires not only the further adoption of the technologies mentioned, but also...

Subsidies are intensively used to steer the adoption of energy-efficient technologies. Their cost-effectiveness is disputed for a variety of reasons. First, in a competitive economy, subsidies increase aggregate emissions, which is essentially caused by the income transfer implied by the subsidy (and the associated entry of new firms or enlargement...

Environmental quality and resource management has become a prominent challenge in a modern economy. The complexity involved has prompted a series of diverse policy initiatives, ranging from market oriented instruments (like taxes, subsidies and tradeable permits) to command and control measures (ranging from voluntary agreements to standards). Some...

The regulatory or ‘command and control’ approach has often been the preferred way of achieving objectives in environmental policy, even though the economic approach is becoming more important. The command and control approach consists of the promulgation and enforcement of laws and regulations, prescribing objectives, standards and technologies pol...

As we saw in previous Chapters, analysing the effectiveness of policy instruments in achieving improvements in energy-efficiency is a difficult task. It requires a careful analysis and description and a deep understanding of decision-making processes at the firm level and at the same time a careful analysis of general-equilibrium mechanisms that ar...

Since 1992, Long-Term Agreements on energy efficiency improvement have become the main policy instrument for energy conservation in The Netherlands. This paper investigates whether these agreements bring about improvements in energy efficiency additional to those that would occur anyway, were there no such agreements. The major part of the paper ex...