Shabbir H. Gheewala

• D.Eng. (Environmental Engineering)
• Professor (Full) at King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi

Background Microalgae-based products offer a sustainable solution for food, fuel, and agricultural inputs, presenting environmental benefits and economic opportunities. A comprehensive assessment is needed to understand their potential in supporting sustainability goals, considering the complex interplay between production methods, energy sources,...

Globally, interest is growing in the circular economy in response to the current unsustainable model of production and consumption based on increased use and depletion of resources. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the academic literature on the circular economy, circular economy assessment methods as well as circular strategies in agr...

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Background Microalgae-based products offer a sustainable solution for food, fuel, and agricultural inputs, presenting environmental benefits and economic opportunities. A comprehensive assessment is needed to understand their potential in supporting sustainability goals, considering the complex interplay between production methods, energy sources,...

Hydrogen is emerging as an immense source of energy having the potential to at least partly replace fossil fuels. It is an abundant element on earth, but does not mainly exist in free form. Hydrogen can be produced through different technologies and feedstocks, and based on these, it can be categorized into colors with different environmental impac...

Background Microalgae-based products offer a sustainable solution for food, fuel, and agricultural inputs, presenting environmental benefits and economic opportunities. A comprehensive assessment is needed to understand their potential in supporting sustainability goals, considering the complex interplay between production methods, energy sources,...

This study addresses the critical challenge of sustainably meeting the growing demand for biomass pellets in Thailand, particularly in light of increasing global interest in renewable energy sources. By introducing an innovative approach through the integration of the Open Leontief Model, this research constructs Input-Output Tables (IOTs) specific...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which necessitates accelerated progress in sustainable production and consumption. This study employs an economy‐wide material flow analysis to assess the ASEAN community's material use, waste generation, emissions, resource effic...

The management of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) has become a significant environmental and economic challenge due to the substantial volumes of hazardous waste generated. This article analyses sustainable practices in ELV management across Europe, with a focus on contributions to the circular economy. The systematic literature review, conducted for a...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Thailand’s biomass pellet production were comprehensively assessed, with a specific focus on wood and corn pellets. Employing the extended input and output tables, the anticipated economic and environmental effects of the rising demand for biomass pellets within the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation region, which...

Methanol production through carbon capture and utilization technologies offers promising alternatives to traditional natural-gas-based methods, potentially mitigating climate change impacts and improving resource efficiency. This study evaluates four methanol production pathways: CO2 hydrogenation, tri-reforming of methane, electrochemical CO2 redu...

Excessive municipal solid waste (MSW) generation and a heavy reliance on fossil fuels for electricity production presents a critical opportunity for waste to energy (WtE) in Thailand. Despite the potential benefits, there are gaps in understanding the sustainability of various WtE technologies. Through rigorous environmental, social, and financial...

An environmental impact assessment of the Yangon waste-to-energy plant was performed using a modified version of the Leopold matrix to analyse the environmental and socio-economic implications. The results revealed significant environmental impacts on air, water and soil as a result of the inadequate management of incineration ash and leachate. On...

Social life cycle assessment was used to assess the social performance of the main economic crops in the area of the sugarcane bio-complex in Thailand. This bio-refinery produces sugar, electricity, ethanol, and bio-chemicals using sugarcane as the feedstock. It is considered the first bio-hub of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEA...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from building activities are one of the most prominent contributors to the problem of global warming. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a widely used tool to investigate GHG emissions from buildings. However, there appears to be a lack of LCA studies on buildings in tropical climates, and especially in Thailand. This stu...

Lifecycle-based methods for the assessment of circular economy (CE) systems are under consideration by the technical committee ISO/TC 323, CE of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). This study reviews the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) in CE to introduce a potential framework for a comprehensive environmental assess...

The agricultural sector in Thailand contributes to air pollution, due to the practice of open burning of agricultural wastes. An in depth-analysis of regionalized health impacts and related damage costs of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure were computed for the 77 provinces of Thailand by parameterizing PM2.5 characterization model. The char...

This study develops comprehensive monetary conversion factors for Thailand to apply in life cycle assessment (LCA) in order to account for environmental externalities associated with products and services. An innovative methodology integrates resource scarcity alongside six determinants within the budget constraint approach to derive lacking econom...

Many countries, especially in the tropical and subtropical regions, have a substantial production of agricultural products, both for domestic consumption and export. This study explores the challenges and opportunities presented by the Bio-Circular-Green economy (BCG) model when applied to the agricultural sector. The theory, concepts, approaches,...

Conjunctive use of water has an increasingly important role in dealing with climate change impacts in several regions. Water resources are holistically managed by harvesting surplus surface water into aquifers during wet season and extracting it for supply in dry season. This study aims to apply integrated hydrological modeling to evaluate groundwa...

Ozone (O3) is a secondary pollutant caused by chemical reactions between nitrogen oxides (NOx) and non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) in the presence of sunlight. Exposure to O3 can lead to respiratory diseases. In addition, ozone effects on ecosystem including the loss of species and the alternations in quality of plants and in animal...

Abstract The research explores the role of second-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries by assessing their environmental, economic, and social impacts. As electric vehicle adoption rises, the growing number of retired batteries presents an opportunity to repurpose them for stationary energy storage applications, extending their useful life and reduc...

This chapter discusses how governments can drive sustainable consumption and production through green public procurement (GPP), which promote environmentally friendly products and services. The government׳s purchasing power can influence markets to adopt sustainable practices, but challenges such as a lack of capability and political will often hin...

The expansion of global tourism development has led to an increase in environmental burdens. This study aimed to assess the operational performance and the environmental impacts associated with food service establishments in Phuket, an international tourist island in Thailand. A joint application of life cycle assessment and data envelopment analys...

Climate change plays a vital role in the hydrology of any river basin, which may have multidimensional consequences. There is a need to conduct climate change impact assessment studies with updated models and scenarios. This study aimed to assess the impact of climate change on the streamflow and hydropower in Pakistan’s Kunhar River basin. Three g...

A circular economy is expected to reduce the use of primary resources through the reuse of products, components, and materials. Material recycling, though advantageous in many cases for saving primary resources by diverting them away from the landfill, may have perverse effects when analyzed from a systems perspective considering the entire materia...

This study endeavored to analyze the progress made to meet the Sustainable Development Goals in terms of resource use, sustainable production and consumption, and the triple planetary crisis (i.e., climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollutant emissions) at the national and regional levels in Asia. The study highlighted that the progress toward...

Clean water and sanitation are essential for human development. Governments, international and national aid organizations have implemented water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) projects worldwide, notably in low- and middle-income countries. However, the majority of such projects experience failure. As a result, 2.4 billion people worldwide are dep...

Air pollution in Thailand is regarded as a serious health threat, especially in the northern region. High levels of particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) are strongly linked to severe health consequences and mortality. This study analyzed the relationship between exposure to ambient concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 by using data from the Pollution Co...

Plastic waste is the most challenging type of waste because its generation rate (consumption rate) is high, and the current recycling rate is low. The increase in the production and disposal of plastics has led to significant environmental problems including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, microplastic pollution, and resource depletion. The study a...

Eco-efficiency is a quantitative management tool that has widely been used to evaluate the life cycle impacts of a product system along with its value to the stakeholders. However, the existing eco-efficiency assessment approaches are relative in nature and unable to address the growing environmental challenges. Therefore, this study is aimed at de...

System stochasticity is an inherent characteristic of agricultural systems. Many studies have been conducted in Thailand to analyze the rice production systems. However, most of the prior work just focused on deterministic approach to investigate the rice production systems while disregarding the system variability. In this study, the conventional...

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling is considered as one of the key approaches to achieving the circular economy (CE) of plastic waste. Bottle-to-Bottle and Bottle-to-Fiber recycling were assessed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Material Circularity Indicator (MCI). Three allocation methods (i.e., substitution, recycled content, and ec...

The presented research examines the repurposing of decommissioned phonebooth units to COVID-19 sampling stations as a meaningful attempt to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities by contributing to a circular economy transition. The repurposing approach is compared to an adequate new build design using a life cycle assess...

Purpose Extensive agriculture activities for crop production have led to increasing environmental impacts that threaten to exceed environmentally safe limits. The purpose of this study is to analyze resource efficiency of the agri-food industry, considering the case of sugarcane production in Pakistan. Methods A holistic approach has been applied...

Groundwater stress is a major global issue; multiple factors affecting groundwater stress can cause confusion among policymakers to choose the most significant factor in coping with this issue. Thus, this study aimed to prioritize the factors affecting groundwater stress by using five different Multiple-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods and s...

The increasing anthropogenic pressure with high food demands requires fundamental changes in global food production practices while respecting the environmental and resource limits of the Earth. Half of the world population consume rice as a staple food which is grown in more than a hundred countries. This study aimed at evaluating the environmenta...

Biomaterials utilization in biorefineries for food, fuel, and fibre is advantageous in terms of income and employment but may also have certain negative repercussions. This study focused on the optimum utilization of sugarcane-based products considering several sustainability indices, viz., greenhouse gas emissions, production costs, and profitabil...

Arable land and water resource scarcity for food production to fulfill the growing demand is a global challenge. Expansion of rice cultivation in Thailand without planning increases land and water depletion especially for the low-productivity rice cultivation areas. The Thai government has an agricultural zoning policy on promoting rice cultivation...

Land and water resources are largely used for food production during agricultural activities. Some farm operations are energy intensive and climate is also affected due to the use of fossil energy during the farm operations. Thus, the nexus assessment without considering climate as an indicator may not provide a holistic outlook toward a secure, ef...

Bio-based materials have been used traditionally for millennia. Their use was overtaken in recent times by the discovery and utilization of fossil-based resources for materials and energy. However, concerns about the non-renewability of fossil resources and greenhouse gas and other emissions associated with their use have brought forth a renewed in...

Chiang Mai has been one of the most polluted cities globally, exceeding the PM2.5 quality standards for decades and facing hazardous air pollution on an annual basis. As ambient PM2.5 strongly affects human health, this study aims to investigate the hotspots of PM2.5 and health impact areas due to exposure to PM2.5 by illustrating a spatial distrib...

The current laboratory-scale production of biodiesel from multiple feedstocks has the potential to be a large-scale industrial process. Thus, the energy balance of the production of biodiesel from multiple feedstocks must be studied. This study compares the energy balance of the production of biodiesel from multiple feedstocks to the production of...

The production of biodiesel from multiple feedstocks, which is now conducted on a laboratory scale, has the potential to be scaled up to an industrial level in the future. Consequently, it is essential to evaluate the environmental effect of multi-feedstock biodiesel production. This study compares the environmental performance at the end-point lev...

Riceberry rice has a special characteristic of being specially bred with high nutrients. High-value added products from riceberry are being promoted targeting health-conscious consumers. To provide supporting information for sustainable food systems, environmental footprinting was applied for evaluating the environmental performance of a ready-to-e...

Food security can be under threat due to climate change, which has the potential to alter crop yield. Wheat, maize, and rice are major crops contributing to global food security. The impact of climate change on crop yield with different models and techniques has been projected; this article reviewed the worldwide impact of climate change on future...

The majority of municipal solid waste in Thailand is organic waste including food and garden waste. Improper waste management has caused negative impacts on the environment. This study aimed to find a hypothetical municipal organic waste management scenario with the lowest environmental impacts using life cycle assessment (LCA). The system boundary...

Sugarcane leaves and trash burning during harvesting, and vinasse management, are major challenges of the Thai sugarcane industry. Identification of the appropriate valorization pathways for both the biomass waste streams using the sugarcane biorefinery concept is necessary. This study aims to assess the environmental sustainability of five CE mode...

Palm-based biorefinery system has gained attention worldwide because of potentially high economic returns. However, environmental impacts also increase with the additional production. Therefore, this study aims to assess the sustainability of (1) current palm-based biorefinery system in Thailand, including cooking oil and biodiesel, and (2) palm-ba...

Landfilling is the main technology for municipal solid waste (MSW) disposal in Thailand. Semi-aerobic landfill and mechanical biological treatment (MBT) are the emerging options for MSW management. Nevertheless, their direct and indirect impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are still unclear. In this study, life cycle analysis was used to anal...

A literature assessment was conducted to determine the current state of microplastics research in ASEAN countries focusing on 1) microplastics in water, sediment, and water organisms; 2) microplastics' sources and dispersion; and 3) microplastics' environmental consequences, including human toxicity. ASEAN countries contributed only about 5 % of th...

The performance for simulating precipitation of 27 global climate models (GCMs) participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) is evaluated over the Southeast Asia (SEA) region and nine SEA countries for the period 1975–2014 by comparing observation data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC). The perfor...

As a decision support tool, life cycle assessment (LCA) is prone to multiple uncertainties associated with the data, model structures, and options offered to practitioners. Therefore, to make the results reliable, consideration of these uncertainties is imperative. Among the various classifications, parameter, scenario, and model uncertainty are wi...

Purpose Existing emission and toxicity characterization models in life cycle assessment are currently not suitable for assessing pesticide-related impacts of crop cultivation in tropical regions. This study aims to parameterize the scientific consensus model USEtox for Thai environments to derive toxicity characterization factors of pesticide emiss...

Greater efforts than ever before are now being made to decarbonise the transport sectors in the ASEAN and East Asia Summit countries. With a quarter of total carbon dioxide emissions coming from transport energy use, there are roughly three options to reduce emissions – reducing transport energy demand, improving vehicle fuel efficiency, and replac...

The sustainability level of current rice farming practices in Thailand was assessed based on in-field data from interviewing 2000 farmers covering six rice varieties and their different production systems. Data were collected on farmers’ characteristics and farming activities according to the 41 requirements of the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) s...

Biodiesel production from multiple feedstocks, which is currently being carried out on a laboratory scale, has the potential to be scaled up on an industrial scale in the future. Therefore, it is necessary to study the environmental impact of multi-feedstock biodiesel production. This study assesses the environmental performance of the simulated pr...

Available at: http://switch-asia.eu/site/assets/files/3432/regional_indicators_and_database_on_resource_efficiency_in_asia.pdf Abstract: The Asia Pacific region is home to 60% of the world's population, and it is predicted that the region's worldwide yearly gross domestic product (GDP) share would climb to 50% by 2030. The region consumes 60% more...

Available at: http://switch-asia.eu/site/assets/files/3431/regional_assessment_report_examining_the_interlinkage_between_scp_and_regional_issues_in_asia.pdf Abstract: The changing consumption and production patterns have emerged as a critical challenge for the member states of Asia. The region is facing several issues due to the intensive use of re...

Promotion of sustainable maize production in Northern Thailand, the country’s largest maize-producing region, is crucial to securing the supply of the nation’s feed manufacturing, as well as protecting environmental resources, enhancing social welfare, and improving the livelihoods of farmers and communities. This study aimed to investigate the var...

Despite green sugarcane harvesting being promoted in Thailand, with some limitations on the use of harvesting machines, green sugarcane harvesting is practiced manually in many sugarcane fields. Although the environmental benefit seems clear, this harvesting practice’s social implications are yet unknown. This study assessed social performances of...

Groundwater, the world's largest freshwater resource, is critically important for global food security. Excessive groundwater extraction has led to issues such as groundwater sustainability, scarcity, and stress; various indices have been developed for assessing them. The selection of the right index for the assessment is very important. Therefore,...

Releases of excess nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilisers applied in agricultural production cause eutrophication in the aquatic ecosystem. This study assessed the marine and freshwater eutrophication potentials associated with the fertiliser application in rice, maize, cassava, sugar cane and oil palm, cultivation in Thailand using a life cycle...

Following Thailand’s Alternative Energy Development Plan, lands for sugarcane and oil palm are being expanded to support biofuel production, thus decreasing the availability of land for other crops. Not only does this lead to the change in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but also environmental consequences. This study assessed the effects of land expa...

The increasing global population leading to increased consumption of finite resources is a major challenge facing the ecosystem. This constraint creates the need for a well-coordinated system for producing a sustainable source of food, water, and clean energy (biofuels) which can be achieved by employing nexus principles. As the Nigerian government...

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plants generate electricity by utilizing the syngas obtained from the carbonaceous materials via gasification. These systems commonly use coal fuel; however, biomass fuels like bagasse could be a more environmentally friendly option. This study was aimed at analyzing the effects of varying operating para...

The appropriate use of limited natural resources for generating basic human needs such as energy, food, and water, is essential to help the society function efficiently. Hence, a new approach called nexus is being considered to resolve the effects of intrinsic trade-offs between the essential needs. A review of different methods and frameworks of t...

This paper studied greenhouse gas inventory data acquisition and analytics for municipalities in Thailand. A complete and transparent GHG inventory of eight municipalities was developed to document the current situation, and to help decision-makers to clarify their priorities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Global Protocol for Community-...

While the benefits of organic rice for consumers are obviously seen in terms of nutritional and health aspects, the social effects of conventional and organic rice farming are also important to be investigated. This study compared the social performances of conventional and organic paddy rice in the northeast of Thailand by using the social life cy...

Wood pellets are one of biomass-based energy carriers considered important as renewable energy source. This study considers wood pellets for heat and power generation from fast-growing Leucaena and Acacia trees and para-rubber trees in a life cycle perspective. The objectives of this study are to estimate the actual cost (including environmental ex...

Sustaining the growth of Thailand's bioethanol industry depends markedly on security of feedstock supplies. However, being exposed to crises may impact livelihoods of farmers and discourage them from farming the energy crops. Farmer livelihood sustainability may need to be assessed and monitored. This study was carried out to propose sustainable li...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) and Eco-efficiency were applied to various kinds of riceberry rice products (food and personal care products) for evaluating their environmental and economic performances. The LCA results indicated that raw material stage was the major hotspot significantly contributing to global warming and other impacts. Improvement op...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become a widely recognized method for evaluating the environmental performance of a product or system along its supply chain. Nowadays, site-dependent Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods have been developed and LCA results could therefore potentially reflect the local, national, and/or regional environmental...

In this study, we developed user-friendly software (CF-Rice) for calculating the carbon footprints (CF) of rice products. The approach follows the principles of Life Cycle Assessment while incorporating more flexibility for activities specific to rice production. The graphical user interface provides empirical emission and conversion factors obtain...