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Sustainability accounting of neighborhood metabolism and its applications for urban renewal based on emergy analysis and SBM-DEA
Abstract
Rapid urbanization exacerbates urban metabolic activities associated with irreversible environmental degradation. Evaluating urban metabolic performance is an effective method to meet targets for sustainable development in contemporary urban areas. Neighborhoods, which are regarded as the basic parts of cities, can detail the metabolic structure and interactions from a bottom-up perspective. In consequence, this study proposed an eco-efficiency model which combined emergy synthesis and slack-based measure data envelopment analysis. A case study with questionnaire and statistical data for eight communities in Chongqing, China was used to shed a light on the properties of emergy metabolic flows and eco-efficiency. The results showed that the study communities heavily depended on external resources. Intense communal activities within relatively small geographic areas caused immediate surroundings to suffer from enhanced environmental pressures. Eco-efficiency performances were mostly invalid, and a significant heterogeneity existed among communities. Enhancing the performance of renewable and non-renewable resources whilst also reducing the production of wastes was essential to improve the overall eco-efficiency of local communities. To assist with this, a neighbor-level sustainable renewal framework was proposed which took account of metabolic flows and communal renewal operations. The findings of this study can provide a paradigmatic example for urban renewal projects elsewhere that embed metabolic performance in neighborhood redevelopment.
... Existing studies of urban metabolism cover global 17 , national 18 , and regional scales 19 , as well as speci c sectors 20 , communities 21 , and households 22 . At the city level, differences in climatic conditions, demographics, socioeconomic development, and resource endowment would cause signi cant variations in material and energy consumption, which can also cause differences in urban metabolic performance among cities. ...
... A 'good' urban metabolic performance based on the emergy framework usually indicates that an urban system depends more on indigenous renewable resources than non-renewable resources to maintain a self-sustained state 28 . Emergy analysis has been widely used in accounting of urban metabolic performance 21,29 . Therefore, emergy analysis can provide a holistic and conceptual understanding of urban metabolic performance, as it integrates various types of resource use exhibited in environmental, economic, and social subsystems. ...
Unprecedented pace of urbanization and industrialization caused a massive increase in China’s urban metabolic pressure. The trend presents an urgent challenge for detailing the long-term changes and disparities in urban metabolic performances in a wide range of cities. Here, we present empirical evidence of 283 China’s cities from 2000 to 2018 based on emergy analysis indicating that China’s urban metabolic performance gradually becomes worse. For example, the environmental sustainability index decreased by 81.64% between 2000 and 2018. In addition, emergy-based performances among China’s cities show considerable differences. Agricultural cities and light manufacturing cities have better sustainability; energy production cities face high environmental pressure. Scenarios for 2025 show that total emergy use would experience slower growth; and most cities continue their decline in emergy metabolism. To ensure overall progress on urban metabolic performance, heavy manufacturing cities and energy production cities should give more attention in adjusting emergy structure.
... Nowadays, scholars have proposed and applied nearly more than one hundred evaluation methods, and those usually used in the performance evaluation of IMPs are: Delphi method [36], AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) [37], fuzzy synthetic evaluation method [38], gray method [39], artificial neural network [40] and DEA (Data Envelope Analysis) [41]. Although all of the above methods have their own advantages and have been applied to different degrees, they all have a common drawback that they can't handle the uncertain information with well. ...
... Although it differs greatly from the weight of social relations, the weight of environ- mental benefits ranked second among the four indicators. Studies have shown that the actual environmental impact during the construction period is usually different from the predicted value, however when the project begins to operate, the difference between the actual value and the predicted value gradually starts to narrow, and then gradually increases with the increase of the operation time [41]. Since the project has been only in operation for five years, the significant negative impacts on the environment along the route have not caused yet. ...
An increasing number of infrastructure mega-projects (IMPs) have been built worldwide over the past decades, that comprehensively assess the performance of operation and maintenance (O&M) are rare. This paper attempts to identify indicators to assess the O&M performance, literature review, document analysis, and Delphi method are used to determine 23 indicators, and an evaluation model combining entropy weight and improved D-S evidence theory was proposed. The indicator system and evaluation model can be validated by taking the Chengdu-Chongqing high-speed railway as an example. The results revealed the comprehensive O&M performance of project is good, the evaluation grades of social relations, economic benefits and operational capability are all good, while the environmental benefits is fair. It is importance to reduce the negative impact on the surrounding environment, improve the utilization rate and enhance the sustainable development of the IMP. Furthermore, the improvement strategies of O&M performance were formulated.
... Huang et al. [24] categorised urban renewal projects in Taipei into three dimensions of environmental, economic, and social, by classifying them into decision units, and evaluated the efciency of renewal projects based on DEA. Tang et al. [25] combined energy analysis and SBM-DEA to construct an eco-efciency model and illustrated the applicability of this eco-model in urban regeneration using the questionnaire statistics of Chongqing, China, as an example. Numerous studies have shown that DEA treats the study area as a grey system in a complex urban system, focusing on the relationship between its "input" and "output," instead of studying the interaction of various factors, similar to "black box operation," which can avoid the bias caused by the interaction of the internal links of the complex urban system and thus obtain more realistic performance evaluation results. ...
With the advent of the stock-planning era, urban renewal has gradually become an important part of urban construction. Urban renewal is essentially a process of solving the rational redistribution of space. However, blind urban renewal can easily lead to the waste of space resources. Therefore, an appropriate renewal location can maximize the space’s renewal efficiency. Based on the perspective of space benefits, this study constructs an urban renewal site selection evaluation system suitable for Macau SAR from two aspects of social and economic benefits and space benefits and uses the DEA model to verify the evaluation system. Thus, we can more objectively and directly judge the evaluation of benefits in urban renewal site selection, maximize the efficiency of spatial renewal, and provide reference for urban site selection decisions. The results are as follows: Funing Building is the best item among the four renewal projects, and it is also the most suitable target point for development; the super-rich benefit is inefficient in terms of both space benefit and production cost benefit.
... Álvarez-Rodríguez, Martín-Gamboa, and Iribarren [19] employed DEA modeling for the operational performance. Tang et al. [34] introduced a model for eco-efficiency evaluation. Gilani, Sahebi, and Oliveira [35] studied the fuzzy integrated method for selecting the suitable supply potential points. ...
... Emergy theory can solve the problems that different materials and energy in the system have different forms and dimensions and cannot be measured uniformly, and realize the unified measurement of social, economic, and ecological values. Emergy analysis has been widely used in various system assessments, such as Economic Development, Ecosystem [10,11], Agricultural Production [12,13], Pollution Control [14,15], Resource Assessment [16,17], Wastewater Treatment [18,19], and Energy Utilization [20,21]. In assessing the sustainability of the urban system, Qi [22] and others took the water treatment plant as an example and improved the emergy evaluation index system to assess its environmental sustainability according to the characteristics of the water supply system (especially considering the impact of pollutant discharge); Zhang Junxue et al. [23] used emergy theory to quantitatively evaluate the sustainability of environmental governance. ...
Sponge city is a method of managing rain floods, proposed by China to deal with urban waterlogging and the overflow pollution of drainage pipe networks, which indicates a more effective strategy to promote urban sustainable development. Due to the diversity of sponge city construction objectives and the complexity of the developmental system, a unified and effective sustainability evaluation method has not yet been formed. Based on the emergy analysis method, the indicators of ecosystem service, the construction cost, the runoff regulation, and the pollutant reduction of sponge city construction are thus included in the evaluation system, and the sustainable evaluation model of a sponge city is fully constructed. Taking the core area in the south of Haicang in Xiamen City as the studying object, the runoff regulation, and the pollutant reduction indicators, are carefully obtained by using Info Works simulation software. The results showed that: ① the quality of COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) of pollutants discharged from the research object is 409.8t/a, the total runoff is 3.579 million m3/a, the current annual total runoff control rate is 37.15%, and the current emergy index ESI of sponge city system is 0.05 < 1, which is in an unsustainable state, It is necessary to upgrade and transform the urban underlying surface; ② The transformation intensity of three LID (Low Impact Development) facilities, i.e., concave green space, permeable pavement and green roof, is carefully selected as different construction schemes. When the construction intensity of LID is 25%, the emergy index ESI (Emergy Sustainable Index) = 1.08, which meets the basic requirements of sustainable development; As long as the reconstruction construction intensity is 30%, the growth value of ESI, ΔESI, is the largest, the sustainable growth effect of sponge city construction is the most obvious, and the marginal benefit is the largest; ③ As long as the total annual runoff control rate of the research object is 69–82%, its sustainable energy index ESI should be within the range of 1.39–1.83. If ESI is less than 1.39, this indicates that the total annual runoff control rate of the research area cannot adapt to the planning requirements of 69%.
... In addition, when the efficiency of multiple DMUs is greater than one, the efficiency measure may be distorted and ineffectively evaluated (Shuai and Fan 2020). It can overcome the previously mentioned problem for the superefficiency model (Tang et al. 2020), allowing for a more refined comparison of multiple effective DMUs with a relative efficiency of 1. ...
It is vital to determine the changing spatiotemporal patterns and driving factors of green total factor energy efficiency (GTFEE) in order to design scientific policies to promote energy efficiency in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) region. From 2010 to 2019, the super-efficient SBM model and the global Malmquist-Luenberger index provide an appropriate framework for measuring the spatiotemporal evolution of GTFEE and the dynamics of energy productivity in RCEP countries. With the coefficient of variation and the Thiel index, an extensive view of the spatiotemporal variance in GTFEE is offered, taking regional heterogeneity into account. Furthermore, the Tobit model is introduced to investigate the factors influencing the GTFEE of RCEP members, which may address the restricted values of the dependent variable when compared to the least squares regression model. Findings suggest that (1) The GTFEE of RCEP members tends to be low and unevenly distributed spatially and temporally, with much room for improvement. (2) The energy productivity index fluctuates strongly, and the improvement primarily comes from technological progress. (3) The Non-ASEAN region possesses higher GTFEE than the ASEAN region, albeit regional variations are diminishing. (4) In terms of the major factors influencing the regional GTFEE, the non-ASEAN region looks to be distinct from the ASEAN region. The findings shed light on the trends and influencing factors of GTFEE in RCEP and serve as a resource for international energy cooperation and sustainable development.
Graphical abstract
... Meanwhile, emergy theory provides the unit emergy value (UEV) for describing the emergy of matter, energy, and currency in the system. UEV is defined as the solar energy per unit product or service and can convert different forms of matter, energy, or currency into a unified unit, solar emjoules (sej), to calculate the corresponding emergy [22,35]. The specific calculation method is as follows: ...
Urban sustainability is the comprehensive manifestation of development structures and economic aggregates. The current sustainable evaluation of cities from a single aspect cannot comprehensively reflect urban sustainable development. Based on emergy, this study constructs an assessment method of urban sustainability from development structures and economic aggregates. Jiaxing is the case study explored as the sustainable development model of cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) of China. High sustainability of economic aggregates is found in Jiaxing, which is driven by the growth of green GDP. However, the urban development of Jiaxing primarily depends on the input of ecosystem resources, which hinders the sustainability of development structures within Jiaxing. These findings indicate that economic aggregates drive the development of Jiaxing and that the development structures within Jiaxing are unsustainable, resulting from the low sustainability of the natural subsystem and the economic subsystem. As such, it is proposed that industrial structures, development models, and management policies be adopted within cities in the YRD of China in order to promote sustainable development of cities in the YRD of China. This study, therefore, seeks to provide methodological guidance for urban sustainable evaluation.
... Dong et al. (2018) proposed a framework combining the emergy-based indicator and the SBM DEA model to evaluate crop production systems in China. Similarly, Tang et al. (2020) evaluates the emergy flows and the eco-efficiency performance of eight communities in China. They identify major metabolic flows to construct the emergy-based indicators; the SBM DEA model was then used. ...
Society is facing different challenges such as resource scarcity, climate change, and food security. Thus, proposing methodologies to assess the sustainability of promoted circular systems is essential to balance economic benefits and the preservation of nature. The eco-efficiency concept seeks to achieve sustainable management and production, creating more value and reducing resource consumption and environmental impacts. This paper proposes a new method for eco-efficiency and circularity assessment through a combined input-output oriented approach of Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and network Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Overall, the definition of boundaries and the quantification of inputs and outputs of the system are carried out, and then, the DEA assessment establishes eco-efficiency levels and targets for inefficient systems. The composite method was applied to evaluate the eco-efficiency and circularity of 50 dairy farms located in Galicia, Spain. To do this, a two-stage network structure is considered, evaluating the stages of feed crop (first stage) and milk farming (second stage), where cattle manure is valorised as organic fertilizer to feed crop farming, closing the loop. The results indicate that the first stage presents the lowest efficiency indexes. In this sense, the main reductions should be focused on pesticides and fertilizers as improvement actions to be implemented. Moreover, on average, efficient dairy farms present a higher level of circularity than inefficient ones. In this context, this method seeks to be useful to inform decision makers about their eco-efficiency performance to achieve sustainable and efficient circular systems.
... Focusing on cultural-led regeneration, Chiu et al. (2019) proposed varied indicators in four dimensions (localization &revitalization, community collaboration, creative &innovative energy, business &management) to evaluate the management strategy of Taipei's urban renewal stations. Tang et al. (2020) applied energy analysis and evaluated community metabolic performance to improve the overall ecological efficiency of local communities. The other group of studies has adopted a comprehensive approach to establishing an indicator evaluation system applicable across different studies. ...
Urban renewal to fulfill the updated needs of urban residents is an inevitable product of urbanization at certain stages. And how to effectively prioritize varied attributes to be renewed across scales is a challenging process for urban governance worldwide. This study aimed to fill the existing gaps by merging the prioritization capacity of importance-performance analysis (IPA) and the scalability potential of social media data. The study pioneered establishing a social-media-based improvement index (SMII) for urban renewal. Based on the framework of importance-performance analysis, SMII takes the most overkilled point (the lowest importance but the highest performance) as the origin and calculates the area between other points and the origin. SMII always has the highest value in the quadrant with high importance but low performance. We demonstrate the usage of SMII taking the landscape services of urban park systems as an example. We used SMII to understand the users' evaluation of parks' services across scales and then clarified the priority sequence for future renewal. Among selected parks, we identified three parks that need immediate renewal. Among all the services, we found that recreational activities and social interactions are in highest priority for renewal in Beijing's park systems. The findings suggest that the history and culture services of the Old Summer Place Park need to be improved first for a wide variety of reasons. The findings also reveal multiple temporal changes of varied services. Our study concludes that SMII can clarify problem prioritization and cost-effective guide decision-making for urban park renewal with high scalability both temporally and spatially. Meanwhile, SMII can extend its applications to analyzing various issues in the urban environment on multiple scales for the effective allocation of resources during urban renewal.
... Tayala et al., (2020) applied the BCC model with constant input to calculate the efficiency and select the most sustainable facility layout plan, combined with machine learning, K-means clustering and meta heuristics approaches. An SBM-DEA model combined with emergy analysis was used to assess the urban metabolic performance of eight Chinese communities by Tang et al., (2020). The frontier approach has brought all the sustainability assessment indicators under the composite sustainability framework. ...
Sustainability is the crux of urban renaissance. Imbibed with utopian technological planning, understanding the convergence between smart development and sustainable practices for city development is necessary. Smart cities have succeeded in bringing high standards of living to its residents. This article evaluates the long-term sustainability performance of 35 leading European smart cities over time from 2015 till 2020 to understand on how these cities address sustainability to make the concept of smart sustainable cities more actionable. A novel Double-Frontier Slack Based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis (DFSBM-DEA) model considering undesirable factors in the technology set is proposed for the assessment. An integrated relative sustainability performance assessment model considering both the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoint simultaneously, in terms of interval efficiency is used to determine the most efficient smart city under 6 various dimensions of sustainable development. These key dimensions include; Energy and Environmental Resource, Governance and Institution, Economic dynamism, Social cohesion and solidarity, Climate Change and, Safety and Security. A productivity progress assessment from a double frontier perspective using a modified Malmquist-DEA model is then used to capture the response of each smart city in terms of their productivity growth towards achieving sustainable development. Results show Dublin (ranked 1st) as the most smart and sustainable European city under all the proposed dimensions of sustainable development from the double-frontier perspective. Along with Dublin lies Oslo, Zurich and Amsterdam as the cities with high aggregate sustainability performance. The results also revealed significant difference in the productivity progress values from the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoint, thus exemplifying the significance for the proposed aggregate productivity progress measurement model. The findings of the present study contribute to knowledge and practice for smart city modellers, decision makers and urban planners, by aiding methodological clarity in assessing sustainable capacity of cities from a double frontier perspective and, in particular, by drawing attention to underlying assumptions about the role of sustainability in smart city development. This research stands as a breakthrough in the field of relative sustainability assessment using non-parametric approaches and a benchmark for global smart cities to shape their development in light of sustainability.
... By combining the actual objectives of the research in this study, we adopted the DEA model based on slack variables proposed by Tone [52,53], namely, the SBM model for evaluating the green development efficiency of 17 cities in Shandong Province. The specific form can be expressed as follows [54][55][56][57]: ...
Environmental regulation and technological innovation play important strategic roles in green growth, and the three systems interact and influence each other. Herein, we used a comprehensive development level evaluation model for calculating the environmental regulation and technological innovation indices for 17 cities in Shandong Province. We used the slack-based measure-data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model to measure green development efficiency. The coupling coordination degree model was used to determine the coordination of environmental regulation, technological innovation, and green development; we divided the cities into three systems: green economy lagging, environmental regulation lagging, and technological innovation lagging. We used grey correlation analysis to explore the factors affecting system development. Eastern coastal cities were better developed in the three systems and the degree of coupling and coordination, like Qingdao and Weihai, and the observed level of technological innovation development, a critical factor in the coordinated development of cities, was lowest in Shandong Province. The grey correlation analysis illustrated that the level of economic development and the level of foreign economic development impacts cities labeled green economy lagging; the impact of pollutant emissions is greater than pollution control expenditure in environmental regulation lagging cities; and the government’s attention and the cultivation and attraction of talent are foundational for technological innovation in lagging cities. Considering these factors, we make recommendations for the optimal development of cities and coordinated development of regions.
... After that, they examined the hierarchy of Beijing's energy metabolic processes, and suggest that Beijing's further optimization on energy metabolic system should focus on promoting the utilization of cleaner energy in "lower" layer of Beijing's energy metabolic system (Hu & Mu, 2019). Tang et al. (2020) delineated the metabolic interactions among social, economic and environmental systems at the community scale, and found that there was significant heterogeneity among communities. Based on the urban carbon metabolism analogy model, Li et al. (2021) compared and calculated the relationship between the scale of urban construction land and carbon emissions and their differences, and found that the spatial heterogeneity of urban land had a greater impact on carbon emissions. ...
The undergoing rapid urbanization is bringing dramatic economic development and social improvement for cities, but also a series of problems associated with the urban energy metabolism, which hinders the transition toward a carbon–neutral society. Optimizing the energy metabolic processes has been one of the key solutions to cure the metropolis disease that are caused by the enormous energy throughputs in urban areas. This paper highlights the heterogeneity of components in urban energy metabolic system and evaluates the related impacts on urban energy metabolism based on gravity model. Using the data from Beijing’s 17 sectors during 2005 ~ 2018, in combination with the “de-coalification” and “non-capital function dispersal” policies in Beijing, this paper testifies that each sector has different impacts on Beijing’s energy metabolism and conducted the scenario analysis based on Beijing’s recent supply and demand side control policies. It is found that the supply control policies are losing the effectiveness on Beijing’s energy metabolism, and may even cause energy shortage up to 0.09 mtce; the demand-control policies can reduce the total energy consumptions up to 1.44 mtce, and improve the energy metabolic processes in the manufacture and education sectors, but will increase the energy consumption in the transportation and wholesale trade sectors. The method proposed in this paper expands the analytical framework for the optimization of urban energy metabolic system, and the results provide suggestions for the policy making of urban carbon–neutral transition.
... It has been applied to a wide variety of industrial and regional contexts [25]. There are various methods for eco-efficiency evaluation, which include life cycle analysis [30,31], ecological footprint [32,33], energy analysis [34,35], and ratio method [36]. DEA is also a major method of evaluating eco-efficiency, which takes into account economic benefits and ecological performance. ...
In this paper, an eco-efficiency analysis is conducted using the epsilon-based measure data envelopment analysis (EBM-DEA) model for Russian cities along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). The EBM-DEA model includes five input variables: population, capital, public investment, water supply, and energy supply and four output variables: gross regional product (GRP), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, solid waste, and water pollution. The pattern of eco-efficiency of 28 Russian cities along the NSR is empirically analyzed based on the associated real data across the years from 2010 to 2019. The empirical results obtained from the analysis show that St. Petersburg, Provideniya, Nadym, N. Urengoy, and Noyabrsk are eco-efficient throughout the 10 years. The results also indicate that the cities along the central section of the NSR are generally more eco-efficient than those along other sections, and the cities with higher level of GRPs per capita have relatively higher eco-efficiency with a few exceptions. The study provides deeper insights into the causes of disparity in eco-efficiency, and gives further implications on eco-efficiency improvement strategies. The contributions of this study lie in the fact that new variables are taken into account and new modeling techniques are employed for the assessment of the eco-efficiency of the Russian cities.
... Both of these concepts first emerged in the 1970s [18] in recognition of the need to balance the need of the present generation with the demand and dignity of future generations [12]. Thus, sustainable urban renewal is considered a healthy approach to promote land values and Sustainability 2021, 13, 4154 4 of 28 improve the quality of the environment, limit the problem of urban growth, and control the rural exodus to achieve various socioeconomic objectives [20]. The United Nations New Urban Agenda [16], which was held in Surabaya, Indonesia, in 2016, promoted a shared vision of a better and sustainable future, in which all peoples have equal rights [16] and access to the advantages and opportunities that cities can offer [17]. ...
Urban renewal is an ideal approach to promoting the value of the urban fabric and improving the sustainability of the urban environment. This study, which shows the continuity of research on sustainable urban renewal, aimed to identify sustainable urban renewal literature based on a library analysis of scientific research since 2000. A total of 3971 scientific papers from the SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded) and SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index) databases were reviewed to examine how research concerning “sustainable urban renewal” has emerged and developed in the past 20 years. The h-indices and impact factors of the most relevant journals in urban renewal and sustainable development since 2000 were analyzed. The most frequently cited articles were analyzed using analysis of social networks (VOSviewer). The results revealed potential future focuses of research and guidelines that link urban renewal and sustainability: the engagement of all stakeholders in the decision-making process; the involvement of residents in projects; the development of cooperation between towns and cities; the preservation and reuse of built and industrial heritage while respecting environmental law; and, finally, the search for new financing techniques. These potential future research topics were analyzed in four research areas so that sustainable development can easily be integrated into an urban renewal project
... Emergy theory is widely used in the study of ecological efficiency and sustainable development of various ecosystems. An ecoefficiency model has been proposed on the basis of emergy synthesis and slack-based measure data envelopment analysis [22]. Moreover, the authors discussed the characteristics of emergy metabolic flow and eco-efficiency using a questionnaire survey and statistical analysis. ...
In view of the coordination of economy, society, and environment in the process of the rapid development of the regional economy, this study proposes the evaluation method of sustainable development of a regional economy on the basis of emergy. The study also constructed an evaluation index system of sustainable development of regional ecological economy from four aspects, namely, structural, functional, and ecological efficiency, and sustainable development index. The objective was to comprehensively evaluate the quality and environmental friendliness of regional economic development. On this basis, this study measured and evaluated the sustainable development of the ecological economy in Anhui Province by using emergy to analyze the statistical data of the economic development of Anhui Province, China, from 2010 to 2018. The study also provides targeted decision-making suggestions for the sustainable and high-quality development of the Anhui economy. Furthermore, this study provides a measure and evaluation method for the sustainable development of the regional economy and effective policy recommendations, which have important theoretical and practical significance.
With climate change caused by massive greenhouse gas emissions emerging as an issue of global concern, it is urgent to improve carbon emission efficiency (CEE) for countries along the Belt and Road (BRI). The super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model is adopted to evaluate the CEE of 60 BRI countries from 2010 to 2019, while the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index, Theil index, and coefficient of variation (CV) are coupled to quantify the spatial and temporal variation and dynamic evolution of CEE. Subsequently, the spatial Durbin model (SDM) provides an empirical investigation regarding the impact of renewable energy investment and energy resource endowment on CEE given the spatial spillover effect. It is found that (1) From a static perspective, the CEE of BRI countries is generally poor and unevenly distributed in terms of temporal and spatial dimensions. The regional variation of CEE in Southeast Asia is narrowing, while it is widening in other regions. (2) Referring to the dynamic level, the GML index is featured U-shaped fluctuations, and both technical efficiency and technological progress contribute to the improvement of CEE in BRI countries. (3) The CEE of BRI countries exhibits significant spatial dependence, with high-high aggregation as well as low-low aggregation. (4) There is a significant positive influence of renewable energy investment on CEE in the country and neighboring countries, while energy resource endowment presents a remarkable adverse correlation. Consequently, it is suggested that the inter-regional cooperation among BRI countries should be strengthened to reinforce renewable energy investment, exert the technology and knowledge spillover effect sufficiently, and break the resource curse in the environmental field.
Urban eco-efficiency, as an indicator to evaluate urban sustainability, has attracted increased attention, and green technology innovation has been proved to be an effective method to promote eco-efficiency. However, due to regional inequality, the level of eco-efficiency and green technology innovation vary in different cities, which is not conducive to overall development and should be dealt with. Thus, this study explores the influencing mechanism of green technology innovation spillover effect on urban eco-efficiency convergence with mathematical analysis, proposes an SBM model with undesirable outputs to evaluate Chinese cities' eco-efficiency from 2004 to 2018, judges cities' spatial correlation based on Moran's I index, and applies spatial Durbin model to investigate green technology innovation's direct and spillover effects on urban eco-efficiency convergence with time and regional differences. The results show that although there are large spatial differences in Chinese urban eco-efficiency, the overall urban eco-efficiency has improved gradually, and green technology innovation spillover effect can promote urban eco-efficiency convergence, but the degrees differ in time and region. The results of this study can be useful for solving the problem of unequal regional and urban eco-efficiency development by managing the distribution and transfer of green technology innovation in cities.
Excessive emissions of CO2 have become an important factor affecting sustainable urban development. In the existing renewal decision-making, few strategies have been formulated with the goal of promoting the low-carbon development. As a fundamental building block of a city, low-carbon construction in neighborhoods is already the basis for promoting sustainable cities. Therefore, this study develops a carbon accounting methodology and an efficiency assessment model that are applicable at the neighborhood level to measure the carbon emission characteristics and reduction potential. Then, a decision-making framework for sustainable neighborhood renewal is put forward from the perspective of carbon emission mitigation. Through a case study of fifteen communities in Yuzhong District, Chongqing in China, this study reveals the current situation of community CO2 emission and carbon emission efficiency, and formulates the sustainable renewal paths according to local conditions. Results show that 83.16% (1.68E+08 kg) of the CO2 in the study communities comes from energy consumption, and CO2 absorption is only 1.78% (3.62E+06 kg) of the total emission. Meanwhile, the carbon emission efficiency of the fifteen study communities has a significant heterogeneity, with a mean value of 0.7402, and 80% of these communities are ineffective. These communities are ineffective mainly because the resource investment cannot be fully utilized. For example, the average utilization efficiency values for energy, purchased resources, and natural resources are 0.7427, 0.8113, and 0.4384, respectively. Thus, adopting adaptive renewal strategies to integrate the use of resources can effectively promote the construction of low-carbon neighborhoods. In addition, the research results can provide a basis for the organization and management of low-carbon renewal projects and the implementation of plans in other regions.
It is necessary to evaluate the comprehensive environmental pressure (CEP) for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Water-carbon-ecological footprints (named as WF, CF, and EF3D) and Nonlinear Grey Bernoulli projection model are integrated for identifying the CEP in the urban agglomerations of Cheng-Yu district (UAC), middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAM), and Yangtze River Delta (UAD). Results reveal that the general water resources system is quite satisfactory. The annual growth rate of CF is approximately 4.93%, mostly contributed by raw coal consumption. Natural resources consumption exceeds the ecosystem carrying capacity due to the increased ecological deficit (above 3.0 hm²/cap). The average ecological footprint depth reaches 24.61, 17.59, and 30.89 in the UAC, UAM, and UAD, respectively, implying higher than 17 times its own land area required for supporting regional resource consumption. The growth rates of CEP are 3.53%, 2.86%, and 6.85% in the UAC, UAM, and UAD, respectively, above 80% of which is from carbon and ecological pressures. In terms of the coupling coordination degree of environmental footprints, results disclose that the resources consumption structure is improved in the UAM and UAD, but it is in an unfavorable direction for the UAC. Moreover, the future environmental footprints and CEP will continuously increase. Some measures, such as energy-saving and emission-reduction technologies, thus should be further strengthened.
The recent trend of rapid urbanization makes it imperative to understand urban characteristics such as infrastructure, population distribution, jobs, and services that play a key role in urban livability and sustainability. A healthy debate exists on what constitutes optimal structure regarding livability in cities, interpolating, for instance, between mono- and poly-centric organization. Here anonymous and aggregated flows generated from three hundred million users, opted-in to Location History, are used to extract global Intra-urban trips. We develop a metric that allows us to classify cities and to establish a connection between mobility organization and key urban indicators. We demonstrate that cities with strong hierarchical mobility structure display an extensive use of public transport, higher levels of walkability, lower pollutant emissions per capita and better health indicators. Our framework outperforms previous metrics, is highly scalable and can be deployed with little cost, even in areas without resources for traditional data collection.
This study explores how the division of governing power between central and local governments affects the local community's political responses to state-led urban renewal. The study is based on Turkey as an extreme case, where the central government commits to the renewal of one-thirds of the existing national housing stock in the course of twenty years. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the local community responses to the urban renewal projects in three neighborhoods that are located in different metropolitan areas; Adana, Bursa, and Izmir. The variation among the local community's political response to the top-down imposition of large-scale urban renewal projects is analyzed in the context of ostensibly arbitrary delegation of planning authority. This paper concludes that grassroots mobilization in the form of neighborhood associations has a complex relationship with the recentralization of planning authority. These sporadic bottom-up responses to government-led urban redevelopment provide an alternative “unplanned” participatory mechanism for the officially neglected urban denizens.
With increasing populations, mounting environmental pressures and aging infrastructure, urban water and wastewater utilities have to make investment decisions limited by both economic and environmental constraints. The challenges facing urban water systems can no longer be sustainably solved by traditional siloed water management approaches. A central premise of contemporary urban water management paradigms is that in order for urban water systems to be more sustainable and economical, an improvement in resource use efficiency at system level must be achieved. This study provides a quantification of the total resource use of a typical urban water system exemplified in Greater Cincinnati region from raw water extraction for drinking water to wastewater treatment and discharge, providing a better understanding of resource expenditure distributions within the system and a necessary benchmark to which future system improvements can be compared. The emergy methodology was used so that the total environmental work required to produce disparate system inputs could be expressed using a common unit. The results were compared to the concurring life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC) results of the same system. Emergy results highlight drinking water treatment and drinking water distribution as two resource-intensive stages, with energy for pumping and chemicals for conditioning representing the greatest inputs to the former and energy for pumping and metals for piping representing the greatest inputs to the latter. For wastewater collection and treatment stages, aeration and sludge handling were identified as the highest emergy unit processes, mostly due to energy use. Comparison with LCA results substantiate the environmental concerns associated with energy use in the drinking water treatment and distribution stages but indicate that environmental burdens associated with infrastructure are more dependent upon upstream resource use rather than downstream environmental impact. Results from emergy, LCA and LCC point towards aeration and sludge handling as two unit processes on the wastewater side that are particularly costly and environmentally impactful. Results in total are used to suggest alternative strategies that can alleviate identified environmental burdens and economic costs.
The UK has one of the world’s most urbanised societies where nearly 83% of the total population lives in cities. The continuing population growth could lead to increases in environmental pollutions and congestion within cities. The framework of urban metabolism uses an analogy between cities and ecosystems to study the metabolic processes within complex urban systems akin to natural biological systems. It remains as a challenge to fully understand the complicated distribution of resource flows within an urban network. In this paper, Ecological Network Analysis was applied to study the intra-city flows between economic sectors in 35 functional urban areas in order to investigate their respective metabolic relationships. The intra-city flows network of each area was also supplemented with the geographical distance between the workplace zones to study the impacts of spatial distribution on the density of resource flows. The metabolic systems were dominated by 64% of exploitative relationships with an average mutualism index of 0.93 and synergism index of 3.56 across all 35 areas. The consumption-control and production-dependency relationships revealed the hierarchical orders among the sectors resembling the pyramidal structure of an urban ecosystem. Network community classification emphasized the importance of inter-relationship within the organisation of each community class. The producer-type and consumer-type communities showed the tendencies of those sectors to cluster based on their respective hierarchical roles in the ecosystem. This work provides an insight into the wide range of intra-city ecological metabolic characteristics which can potentially expand to a multi-scale assessment of urban metabolism across the country.
Emergy-based Urban Sustainability Assessment Framework (EmUSAF) is an effective and widely advocated method to evaluate the general condition at city-scale. However, applying this framework to medium-sized cities has encountered obstacles owing to the data scarcity and inconsistency problem. One the one hand, a range of data such as detailed import-export goods data are only compiled at provincial level therefore for prefectural cities the lack of data is very common. On the other hand, the original environmental data provided by local government is usually not uniform and well-formatted, meaning that the data inventory disclosed by the environmental data compilation administration in different cities are not identical, leading to the difficulty of comparison. Meanwhile, for a given year, not all elements needed in the emergy synthesis inventory are available due to the difference compilation and disclosure timelines of different statistics reports. These facts hinder both city-specific research at local scale and regional research. To address this lingering issue, we developed a methodology for deriving substitute data from extant available data of upper-level administration division and for integrating them into the EUSAF. With a case study on Jing-Jin-Ji region, covering 11 medium-sized prefecture cities, we conducted an emergy analysis of the whole region and examined the methodology discussing its uncertainties and limitations. This study contributes to emergy synthesis in four aspects: (1) Provide a solution to the enduring data scarcity and inconsistency problem of emergy-based urban sustainability assessment; (2) Establish the deduction method which can deduce data at larger scale to smaller scale when lacking physical data at smaller scale instead of using monetary estimates, and also the accuracy of the deduced data can be identified by using uncertainty analysis; (3) Investigate the strategically essential Jing-Jin-Ji region as a case, applying the new approach to get the data for prefectural cities and carrying out an emergy analysis. We found that the indicators, reflecting the specific development traits of each city, are well confirmed by the status quo in the region. This fact proves that our new method framework is affordable and could be extended in the future study of medium-sized cities suffering from data scarcity. (4) Demonstrate the significant gap between using money value and physical amount to calculate emergy of imported goods, proving the importance of physical amount data in the Emergy-based comparative analysis of urban metabolic efficiency and sustainability.
Understanding the energy metabolism of national economies is nowadays crucial for policymakers in order to define effective policies and to properly set energy efficiency targets. Energy accountings based on the traditional Production-based accounting method (PBA) allows to understand how primary energy is directly extracted, traded, transformed and used within each economy. On the other hand, Consumption-based accounting method (CBA) allows to understand the ultimate economic purposes of such energy flows. The information provided by the joint application of these approaches may provide useful and complementary insight on the national energy metabolism, allowing to identify hotspots for potential interventions from both the supply and demand side. This paper reviews PBA and CBA energy accounting methods, presenting a possible way for the joint use of their results, consistently represented by means of one unique Sankey diagram. This will be useful to have a comprehensive insight on the energy metabolism of national economies, supporting analysts and policymakers in the identification of energy efficiency hotspots. The method is applied to South Africa and to the neighbor country of Botswana, based on data provided by IEA energy statistics and the EORA26 Multi-Regional Input-Output model, taking into account non-renewable fossil energy (raw coal, crude oil and natural gas) and considering the reference year 2013. Results suggest that the joint use of PBA and CBA methods may provide useful information on the hidden energy links among national economies, helping analysts and policymakers in defining alternative energy efficiency policies. For this reason, the Authors argue that results of CBA should be provided alongside energy statistics based on the traditional PBA approach.
Cities have become the main centres of consumption and transformation of resources. As cities are still growing in terms of physical size, number of inhabitants and total energy consumption, unique challenges present themselves in order to safeguard a healthy urban living environment, while preventing resource shortages and pollution. The concept of urban metabolism may contribute to sustainable growth of cities as it can be used to understand emergent patterns in flows of energy and materials in the urban environment. The concept of urban metabolism draws upon an analogy with the biological meaning of metabolism, as it occurs in organisms and ecosystems. Here we present a review of the interpretation of urban metabolism in the context of urban energy dynamics and assess the validity of the proposed analogy with biology. Based on this analogy, we propose a conceptual framework for the role of urban metabolism in urban energy systems. Our review highlights that urban energy systems show a hierarchical organization comparable to ecological systems. However, the emergent patterns that result from the dynamics within urban systems differ from those occurring within ecological systems. We suggest that, in contrast to biological systems, urban energy systems lack energetic constraints at the lowest level of organisation that could enable the resource-efficient regulation of energy requirements at larger scales. The proposed framework highlights that low-level resource supply regulations may contribute to introduce scale-dependent relationships that increase energy use efficiency as cities grow.
Sustainability of cities and the environmental implications of high resource utilization by the domestic sector are growing concerns related to urban regions. Well-informed urban planning decision-making is an essential tool to help in the task and, for that, an important point to consider is the influence of parameters like residential density and housing typology on the intensity of resource utilization. Emergy synthesis, a life-cycle energy analysis methodological approach that considers the interaction of natural and human-made flows, was used to evaluate the environmental support for dwelling operational stage in five typical present-day housing units on the island of Montreal. As expected, resource utilization, measured as total emergy used, was positively correlated to housing unit size both with respect to number of occupants and dwelling size. Results suggest that variables affecting notably the intensity of resource utilization are per household income and per dweller habitable space and, while a higher income increased per capita emergy in all cases, increasing space availability per resident did not result in a decrease of empower density after 50 m²/person. Future work should consider lower and higher densities and analyses at the scale of blocks, neighborhoods and urban planning zones.
Household metabolism is a concept that is concerned with the analysis of stocks and flows of energy, matter, and information at the household scale. This paper starts by providing a brief overview of the concept of household metabolism. Rather than attempting an in-depth review and analysis of this field, the article subsequently maps the contributions and perspectives of a broad variety of research traditions that have an interface with the concept of household metabolism. Next, this paper highlights a number of controversial issues connected to household metabolism, and studies at the interface of household metabolism. Finally, this paper argues that the concept of household metabolism can provide valuable help in diagnosing misalignments between enacted system dynamics and expressed societal goals, and can help to design research that facilitates their alignment.
Evaluating the efficiency of urban metabolism is an effective tool to quantitatively analyze the relationship between social, environmental and economic input and output in an urban ecosystem. In this paper, there are the combination Emergy synthesis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Date Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of time-series approach to comprehensive assessment urban metabolism for the first time. DEA of time-series has the advantage of fully considering the technology changes every year, it can reflect clearly the overall situation of urban metabolism, including the use of various resources and the development of environmental sustainability cycle.
The results show that, with the overall efficiency of metabolism ensured a generally steady rise in Changsha, the trend of urban environmental load rate is increased obviously, there is facing the huge pressure of ecosystem in Changsha. This paper suggests that government and enterprises should take measures to promote the construction of the eco industrial park, gradually realize industrial symbiosis, upgrade through the adjustment of energy structure and industrial structure.
With the rapid process of urbanisation in China, the challenges facing cities with regard to urban fabric, urban function, and human living conditions are enormous. Urban renewal provides opportunities to address these challenges and realise sustainable development. This study proposes a framework for integrating an indicator evaluation system and a decision-making matrix for urban renewal at the neighbourhood level in China; the level at which most development projects take place in a city. The indicator system covers subjective and objective evaluations on different aspects of neighbourhoods to shed light on specific problems and characteristics, namely, social aspects, economic aspects, environmental aspects, land use forms, building conditions, and facility conditions. The decision-making matrix is designed to provide implementation paths and corresponding strategies for urban renewal. The proposed framework was tested using a case study of eight neighbourhoods of Qixinggang, Yuzhong District, Chongqing in China. The results show the status quo and problems of the selected neighbourhoods and specific strategies to address these are subsequently proposed. Via in-depth investigations on various neighbourhoods within a city, decision-makers are capable of locating key areas and adjusting practical approaches from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to ones that are customised and offer small-scale improvements. The proposed framework can shed light on other empirical cities that possess similar local characteristics.
It is necessary to establish a new urban renewal approach, prioritizing the participation of the local society with the capability to resolve problems with the contributions of government, private sectors, and society.
In urban renewal awareness and expectation research, generally, the results of survey-based studies are analyzed using statistical methods. Because of the lack of modelling regarding the spatial references in these questionnaire-based studies, no significant contributions can be made in the decision-making processes of planning that drive sustainable urban transformation. In the present study, by using the multiple-criteria fuzzy decision-making methods (Fuzzy DEMATEL + Fuzzy TOPSIS), the local society’s awareness and expectation levels about urban renewal were determined for 13 different neighborhoods. The results obtained were visualized on a satellite map by using the Geographical Information System (GIS)-supported geostatistical analysis methods. Given the results, and spatializing the level of urban renewal expectations, it was determined that the level of awareness and expectation was higher with local society involvement when compared to other residential areas since urban renewal project processes were started in the Ahi Evran and Küçük Ali residential areas of Kayseri province.
Economic development is generally accompanied by the consumption of ecosystems, so it is particularly essential to evaluate the operation of the economy-ecosystem quantitatively. In this paper, we explore the emergy evaluation indicators system with 23 indicators and measure the change of eco-efficiency in China from 2009 to 2015 by employing a new DEA Malmquist productivity approach. The results show that the economic-ecosystem operation from 2012 to 2015 is getting worse than that from 2009 to 2012. The Malmquist index is then decomposed into efficiency change (EC) and technology change (TC). The annual average value of EC in the first three years is less than 1, and the annual average value of EC in the last three years is more than 1, which indicates that the relative technical efficiency is increasing year by year. From the perspective of technical change, the growth rates of the first three years and three years after are greater than 1, which shows that technology is not the main factor that restricts the operation of the economy and ecosystem in 26 provincial administrative regions.
Global warming, resulted from greenhouse gases emission, has significant impacts on natural ecosystem and economic development. Construction is a leading industry in China's economy with high carbon emissions. Improving the carbon emission efficiency and investigating the driving factors of carbon emission efficiency in China's building industry are very important for the sustainable development of construction industry and the goal of China's carbon emission reduction. This paper measures the total-factor carbon emission efficiency of construction industry from 2003 to 2016 by applying Super-SBM DEA approach. Then the interior driving factors and cross-industrial shock effects of carbon emission efficiency are investigated by industry GVAR model. Empirical results show that the carbon emission efficiency in China's construction industry is low with a downward trend. With regard to interior driving factors, technological progress and energy structure adjustment can promote the carbon emission efficiency of construction industry, but the economic scale with extensive development mode exerts a certain negative influence. From the perspective of cross-industrial driving factors, economy scale, energy structure and technological progress play an important role in the carbon emission efficiency in manufacturing and electricity/gas/water industry, while relatively faint in other industries. Inter-industrial economy scale and energy structure except for transportation industry exert negative effects on carbon emission efficiency, whereas the impacts of exterior technological progress of other industries except for the mining industry are positive. In order to promote industrial carbon emission efficiency, the carbon reduction mechanism for the common but differentiated responsibilities among industries should be established.
Since the late 1970s, China's fast growth of economy and urbanization have driven large-scale urban renewal projects. To deal with complex urban problems, urban renewal requires integrated, coordinated and multifaceted strategies involving a wide range of stakeholders. A deeper understanding of the stakeholders in the decision-making process is an essential step towards sustainable urban renewal. This paper aims to understand the stakeholders and their participation in the decision-making of urban renewal in China, using the case of Chongqing. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey. Stakeholder Analysis and Social Network Analysis were complemented as the research methodology. First, the stakeholders involved in urban renewal decision-making were clarified. Second, the characteristics, including knowledge, power, and interest of each stakeholder, were analyzed. Third, the relationships between stakeholders were probed, and the structure of their network was examined. Finally, policy implications were drawn to the issues of stakeholder participation in urban renewal decision-making in China.
Urban renewal has been an essential strategy for urban development in China. The decision to redevelop land in the process of urban renewal will help to optimize urban spatial layout, guide functional positioning, and improve the physical environment, to solve the urban land resource shortage problem and achieve sustainable development. This research aims to simulate the dynamic trend of land-use change by using the Cellular Automata (CA) model; with various complex settings, the actual urban renewal status, as well as three scenarios for future development, are simulated and analysed in the case study of Chongqing to assist and support stakeholders in making proper decisions for future urban planning.
The study proposes a method to embed the rent gap theory, which states that when the value gap between the potential ground rent and actual ground rent is larger, the attractiveness of investing capital in land redevelopment is larger. In the process of CA simulation, the rent gap theory, as a transition rules of land-use change, can reflect the internal mechanism of urban development. When the location-based spatial characteristics are used, the macro-economic factors, such as GDP, interest rate and depreciation rates, can quantify the rent gap in the CA model. In addition, based on the background of China's "government-led" development, combined with the real situation, the endogenous and exogenous influencing factors of the policy are used as the quantitative factors of the rent gap theory and the second type of transition rule of land evolution, respectively, which can accurately reflect the urban development. The results show that the dynamics in the land redevelopment of Chongqing are well described by the model; additionally, the policy implications to manage the urban renewal are discussed in the research.
Recent high-level agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals aim at mitigating climate change, ecological degradation and biodiversity loss while pursuing social goals such as reducing hunger or poverty. Systemic approaches bridging natural and social sciences are required to support these agendas. The surging human use of biophysical resources (materials, energy) results from the pursuit of social and economic goals, while driving global environmental change. Sociometabolic research links the study of socioeconomic processes with biophysical processes and thus plays a pivotal role in understanding society–nature interactions. It includes a broad range of systems science approaches for measuring, analysing and modelling of biophysical stocks and flows as well as the services they provide to society. Here we outline and systematize major sociometabolic research traditions that study the biophysical basis of economic activity: urban metabolism, the multiscale integrated assessment of societal and ecosystem metabolism, biophysical economics, material and energy flow analysis, and environmentally extended input–output analysis. Examples from recent research demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of sociometabolic research. We discuss future research directions that could also help to enrich related fields.
This study aims to identify and implement appropriate techniques for a sustainability assessment, which corresponds to the optimal balance between efficiency and resilience. Strategies are discussed to fill two important gaps: (1) applicable methods for identifying and analyzing multiple variables for a “metabolic” assessment of urban systems over time; and (2) empirical data that can characterize multiple sub-components (e.g., environmental, financial, and institutional) of an urban system, especially at a refined geographic scale where data challenges are significant. With a specific focus on data integration, two methods, Fisher Information (FI) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), were chosen for this study. Data analyses were implemented in an urban university, which provides valuable opportunities for enhancing our understanding of this type of urban system and enabling data-driven studies of neighborhood sustainability. Based on the strengths and weakness of FI and DEA identified in the empirical study, it is concluded that these two methods can be valuable yet complementary for an integrated system analysis.
To reach the “Zero Hunger” sustainable development goal, increases in the efficiency, quality and sustainability of agricultural practices are needed. The Loess Plateau region is one of the most fragile regions in China, and crop rotation and crop straw recycling are receiving increasing attention in this region. To compare sustainability among different agricultural practices from both ecological and economic perspectives, we employed emergy analysis to comprehensively quantitatively evaluate corn-soybean rotation systems with and without the return of straw to the field in the central region of the Loess Plateau. The results showed that because of the poor natural conditions, both production practices depend heavily on significant inputs of resources and human activities from outside systems. The emergy sustainability index of the corn-soybean rotation with straw recycling system (0.131) was higher than that of the corn-soybean rotation without straw recycling system (0.079); however, neither system is sustainable, as they both produce high environmental loads and result in low production yields. These problems originate from the fragility of the ecosystem and long-term human exploitation of the ecosystem. Furthermore, neither system is ecologically or economically sustainable, and farmers suffer ecological and economic losses when selling soybeans on the market. This inefficiency is due to poor agricultural production methods and environmental conditions. Several insights into and suggestions for reducing environmental loads and improving productivity are presented in this paper.
Improving the eco-efficiency of the circular economy system in mining areas has been recognized as the most effective way to reduce the greenhouse effect and achieve sustainable development. Based on the emergy theory and on data envelopment analysis (DEA), this paper adopts the SBM-Undesirable model to evaluate the eco-efficiency of the circular economy system in China's largest coal mining area, Shanxi Province, during the period 2006–2015. Emergy flow indices are treated as input and output indices. Eco-efficiency is factorized into economic efficiency and environmental efficiency. The potential for improvement of the circular economy system is analyzed based on input redundancy and output deficiency. The results for the period 2006–2015 indicate the following: (1) both the input and the output of the circular system increase during this period; (2) the increased input relies on mostly imported emergy, and the increase in waste emergy is lower than the exported emergy; (3) eco-efficiency is invalid except for 2011 and 2012 and exhibits a decreasing trend beginning in 2013; (4) environmental efficiency is invalid over the entire period, and the eco-efficiency level is positively related to the economic efficiency score; and (5) the circular economy system has a larger energy saving space, and the key to achieving sustainability of the circular economy system is output growth.
Livestock activity is one of the most contributors to climate-change emissions in the agriculture sector. European environmental policies face with the challenge of increasing farmers economic gain not conflicting with environmental aim at the same time, to meet targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The paper aims to contribute to the discussion on CO2 emission mitigation by providing efficiency performance measures in the presence of joint production of milk and GHG emissions.
A Slacks-Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis (SBM-DEA) with undesirable output was adopted and integrated with Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) results from 10 dairy cattle farms in Umbria (Italy) to estimate their environmental efficiency and emission reduction potential. In addition, the dual model of the SBM-DEA was used to quantify the marginal CO2 reduction costs. Four farms resulted in no CO2-eq emission efficient, with a reduction potential ranging from 45.7% to 26.3% of CO2-eq. An average abatement cost of € 243.08 in terms of lower milk production per ton of CO2-eq reduced, was estimated for the whole sample. A positive relationship between marginal abatement costs and CO2-eq efficiency scores was estimated. Marginal abatement costs knowledge could allow assessing the economic impacts of different farms strategies aimed at reducing polluting emissions, as well as the introduction of incentive mechanisms by public decision makers.
Sustainable urban densification is one of the main challenges of European post-industrial cities. In Switzerland, a recent adaptation of the federal law on spatial planning reinforces the limitation of urban sprawl. Hence, public authorities are confronted with the challenge of exploiting the densification potential of the existing urban fabric.
In order to develop realistic, yet ambitious projects, the neighborhood scale is considered as the most appropriate for urban renewal planning. At this scale, projects can follow a larger urban vision for the city, and at the same time, adapt to the specificities of the existing buildings, business, and inhabitants. Therefore, urban renewal projects at the neighborhood scale seem necessary for a sustainable urban development. In this context, adopting an evaluative approach offering a decision-making support appears relevant to contribute optimizing urban renewal projects.
This paper presents a new spatial decision support system (SDSS): URBIUS, specifically developed for urban renewal projects at the neighborhood scale. It provides an assessment based on six sustainability objectives for existing neighborhoods. In addition, it offers assessment thresholds are adaptable for each neighborhood through a dynamic approach taking into account the actual situation of the neighborhood and its expected long-term evolution. Finally, URBIUS is tested on a case study, “Les Moulins” neighborhood in Switzerland, showing its potential to foster sustainable urban renewal at the neighborhood scale.
Rapid economic development has significantly degraded the environmental quality of Erhai Lake and its basin. In order to assess the present sustainability of Erhai Lake Basin and suggest improvement options, this study builds an emergy-based framework, in which the whole basin system comprises five sub-systems divided according to local economic structure and lake functions, including Erhai Lake sub-system, Fishery sub-system, Agricultural sub-system, Industrial sub-system and Household sub-system. Moreover, emergy performances of lake water consumption are analyzed considering the vital role of lake water in the basin development. The results of emergy-based indicators, e.g. EYR (1.31), ELR (60.98), ESI (2.15E-02) and support area SA(r) (1.56E+05 km2, about 60 times the actually available area), reveal that the whole basin is far away from sustainable development. The key factor is the strong reliance on nonrenewable resources, especially in the form of purchased resources (76.48% of total emergy used). In particular, cement industry and transportation equipment industry within the industrial sub-system, as well as massive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticide in the agricultural sub-system, are the main contributors to the overall emergy inputs. Regarding to water consumption, agriculture is the dominant sector by volume, but with a low use efficiency, while industrial water use has the largest environmental impact due to its high water quality requirement. Policy insights for improving the overall sustainability of Erhai Lake Basin are proposed, including adjusting industrial structure and promoting circular economy, facilitating green agriculture, improving water efficiency and increasing renewable energy use.
Developed cities are troubled by various challenges, including urban dilapidation, environmental pollution, traffic congestion, lack of facility provision, and economic decline. Urban renewal, as an important agenda in most countries, holds the aim of addressing these urban problems. With the inherent complexity of urban renewal, renewal initiatives do not always follow an unsustainable path, which has obtained much criticism from both academia and the public. Therefore, an informative decision-making process would contribute to better renewal outcomes. Previous research has mainly focused on one aspect of urban renewal, in which a comprehensive perspective is lacking. The multi-scale feature of urban renewal initiatives also adds complexity and uncertainty to decision-making. Therefore, this paper proposes a multi-scale model that supports decision-making on realizing sustainable urban renewal. Three sub-modules and a supporting database are included in the model. City, district, and neighborhood scales are the foci of the three sub-modules. Both temporal and spatial data are included in the database. Through experimental study and expert interview, the effectiveness of this model is validated.
Urban sustainable development is important for addressing the urgent pressure of ecological transformation in China. This study used an improved emergy ecological footprint method and four indexes to evaluate the sustainability of the complex eco-economic system in Qingdao from 2004 to 2014 by determining the area's emergy carrying capacity and emergy ecological footprint. The results show that Qingdao's per-capita emergy carrying capacity decreased from 12.4305 hm²/cap in 2004–11.3295 hm²/cap in 2014, with a decrease rate of 0.840%. In contrast, the emergy ecological footprint per capita increased rapidly from 3.0609 hm²/cap in 2004–25.4010 hm²/cap in 2014, with an increase rate of 21.212%. Thus, the ecological overload increased over time. Qingdao experienced an expanding emergy ecological deficit beginning in 2009. Furthermore, the four sustainability evaluation indexes together indicate that Qingdao was drifting away from sustainability. Moreover, relevant socioeconomic factors were investigated using Pearson correlation analysis, and the results indicate that the largest correlation coefficient exists between the ratio of the output value of tertiary industry to gross regional domestic product and the per-capita emergy ecological footprint. Therefore, adjusting the energy consumption structure, decreasing dependence on non-renewable energy, increasing the diversity of bioproductive land types and developing high-level tertiary industries are conducive to promoting Qingdao's sustainability. Additionally, the results provide a scientific reference and decision-making basis for regional sustainable development.
Please cite this article as: Mihály Dombi, Andrea Karcagi-Kováts, Klára Tóth-Szita, István Kuti, The structure of socioeconomic metabolism and its drivers on household level in Abstract The joint examination of input flows and the stocks of households provides novel perspectives for socioeconomic metabolism (SEM) research. Our study aims to compare household level material flows and stocks, and economy-wide material inputs, and to explore influential factors affecting the level of metabolism at household level. Household diaries and inventories (n = 73) were used to assemble household-level data regarding material flows and stocks. The mean value of the extrapolated annual material inputs 2.16 tons per household member, while household stocks represented 1.17 tons per household member excluding building stocks, and 46 tons if buildings were considered in the estimation. According to our results, material inputs and stocks are depending on household size and income exclusively.
Sustainability performance is nowadays a major challenge for many cities in the world. Sustainable development refers to the achievement of both ecological and socio-economic objectives over a relevant time period. The present study aims to trace the relative sustainability status of 39 world cities included in the so-called Global City Power Index (GPCI) of the Mori Memorial Foundation in Japan. This is a unique large-scale and detailed multi-temporal data base containing approx. 80 systematically collected urban indicators for the cities concerned. This paper presents and applies a novel and advanced assessment methodology for sustainable and efficient performance strategies of these 39 global cities, by means of an extended and multi-temporal version of a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Using this novel approach, our study seeks to arrive at an unambiguous ranking of the highest performers among ‘urban sustainability champions’, during the time period 2012–2015. Based on the DEA efficiency assessment by regarding the urban input-output ratio as a performance indicator, we examine here one input indicator (Total Employees) and four sustainability output indicators (CO2 Emissions, Nominal GDP, Level of Satisfaction of Employees with their Lives, and Percentage of Renewable Energy Used). Our empirical results provide a global sustainability ranking of the cities concerned. We also show that many European cities have a relatively high performance score on the human and urban environment. We present next more detailed information on a selection of a few interesting cities. Our approach appears to be able to address realistic and transparant priorities and complex policy choices aiming at an improvement of relatively inefficient world cities.
Cities are expected to play a major role in carbon emissions mitigation. A key step in decoupling urban economy from carbon emissions is to understand the full impact of socioeconomic development on urban metabolism over time. Herein, we establish a system-based framework for modeling the variation of urban carbon metabolism through time by integrating a metabolic flow inventory, input-output model and network analysis. Using Beijing as a case study, we track the historical trajectory of carbon flows embodied in urban final consumption over 1985–2012. We find that while the tendency of increase in direct carbon emission continues within this time frame, consumption-based carbon footprint might have peaked around 2010. A significant transition in emission intensity and roles sectors play in transferring carbon over the period are important signs of decoupling urban development from carbonization. Further analysis of driving factors reveals a strong competition between efficiency gains and consumption level rise, showing a cumulative contribution of -584% and 494% to total carbon footprint, respectively. Projection into future pathway suggests there is still a great potential of carbon mitigation for the city, but a strong mitigation plan is required to achieve such decarbonization before 2030. By bridging temporal metabolic model and socioeconomic planning, this framework fills one of the main gaps between monitoring of urban metabolism and design of a low-carbon economy.
Beijing is an international metropolis, with rapid urbanization during the last 30 years. However, it faces the challenge of sustainability with limited natural resources. This paper attempts to incorporate emergy analysis on urban metabolism to investigate the sustainability of the entire Beijing at the county level. Based on the time-series climate data and socioeconomic data, we calculated the structure, intensities, environment pressures and output efficiency of the urban metabolic emergy system by counties between 2005 and 2014. The result shows that the metabolic emergy stores of Beijing, especially in Capital Function Core (CFC) area, had been increasing significantly during the study period, especially for the increasing imported and exported emergy accounting. The 16 districts of Beijing can be grouped into four types of functional areas in terms of the function in urban metabolism. The five parts of urban metabolic emergy system had obviously spatial difference by counties, and the renewable emergy in CFC area and Urban Function Development (UFD) zone was obviously lower than in City Development (CD) zone and Ecological Conservation Development (ECD) area. The non-renewable emergy and waste emergy in CFC area, UFD zone and CD zone were obviously higher than that in ECD area. The imported emergy and exported emergy were significantly higher in Dongcheng, Xicheng and Chaoyang district. Emergy use intensities of CFC area had been increasing with the rapid rise in imported emergy and exported emergy, resulting in the increasing environmental pressure. However, the district governments of CFC area are trying to enhance output efficiency and sustainability to reduce waste emergy. The indices of EYR and ESI had been gradually decreasing and the region with the highest value of ESI and EYR, in decreasing order, are: ECD area, CD zone, UFD zone, and CFC area. The result indicates that CFC area is more fragile and dependent on external resources. Therefore, the Beijing government, especially the district governments of CFC area should encourage the exploitation and utilization of renewable resources and energy, increase the consumption efficiency of non-renewable resources and energy, and establish the mechanism to re-use wastes of resources and energy in order to promote the urban metabolism.
From 2003 to 2013, Macao experienced an economic boom accompanied by rapid socioeconomic development. Macao is a tourist city that depends heavily on an expanding gambling sector, and depends greatly on exogenous resources. In this study, we used H.T. Odum's emergy theory to quantify flows through Macao's urban metabolism and describe the consequences of Macao's urbanization from 2003 to 2013. By employing mass, energy, and emergy metrics, we analyzed different metabolic resources. The anabolic and catabolic flows during urban activities such as importation of resources and discharge of wastes were classified and compiled according to their function in the urban metabolism. Macao's urban metabolism showed different behavior during different periods. The main metabolic factors changed due to changes in the urban structure, government regulations, and other conditions. On an emergy basis, we found that the proportion of the life resource increased as the city developed and expanded. We also found that Macao's anabolic and catabolic density increased, indicating increased metabolic pressure from 2003 to 2013. By analogy with the concept of a biological metabolism, we discuss the criteria and implications of our results for urban metabolism and the consequences for policy makers and urban managers.
Due to their sheer size and complexity, megacities are extreme examples in which both negative and positive aspects of urbanization co-exist and are amplified. Especially in emerging countries they are becoming the dominant paradigm of the future urbanization, representing a sustainability challenge both from the point of view of energy and resource consumption, and from the point of view of climate change adaptation and mitigation.In this paper we compare the energy metabolism in 27 of the world's megacities including details of mobile and stationary energy consumption patterns, fuels used, as well as end-use patterns and electricity generation mix.Our results show that per capita total energy consumption scales with urban population density according to a power law characterized by the universal -3/4 scaling, pointing out that compact cities are more energy efficient with respect to dispersed cities.By comparing energy sources and sectoral end use, also focusing on electricity use and generation source, we found a significant regionalization of energy metabolism, and we discuss the implication for resilience, infrastructure planning, GHG emissions, and policies for infrastructure decarbonization. The comparison of the energy metabolism can lead to a more appropriate management of energy use patterns and electricity generation mix in megacities, giving insights on strategies to improve urban energy efficiency and reducing environmental pressure of megacities.
This paper uses a meta-frontier slack-based DEA model to measure the ecological total-factor energy efficiency as well as the energy conservation potential of China’s four energy intensive subsectors. We incorporate both desirable and undesirable output together in the period, 2000–2013. The conclusions are: firstly, under the meta-frontier, the four subsectors of energy intensive industries have low average level of ecological total-factor energy efficiencies. They are 0.137, 0.212, 0.238, and 0.307 in the non-metallic mineral products manufacturing industry, raw chemical materials and chemical products manufacturing industry, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals industry, and smelting and pressing of non-ferrous metals industry, respectively. Secondly, the ecological energy efficiency in East China is the highest among three regions. Central China and West China are behind, but they are extremely close to each other. Thirdly, East China almost has no technology gap pertaining to energy efficiency, while Central China and West China almost have the same gap. Finally, Sichuan is considered to be the best province in West China under group frontier due to its perform in the three energy intensive subsectors. For Central and East China, no province has higher ecological energy efficiency in more than two energy intensive subsectors.
Many cities are experiencing rapid urbanization and ecological degradation, which has resulted in unsustainable development. It is essential to conduct a scientifically rigorous method to assess the regional sustainability. Among many indicators, eco-efficiency could be an effective instrument to promote a transformation towards sustainability. This study applied the emergy ecological footprint analysis and data envelopment analysis to evaluate the eco-efficiency using data collected from 1993 to 2012 for Jiangsu Province, China. The results showed that Jiangsu’s emergy ecological footprint and ecological deficit experienced an ascending trend in general during the period 1993–2012, indicating that the regional development of Jiangsu has been moving away from sustainability for a long time. In six types of biologically productive areas, fossil land and arable were the major parts of emergy ecological footprint. Furthermore, the growth of green gross domestic product was only about 52% of the conventional gross domestic product, and the pollutants emission, energy and resources consumption increased yearly as the gross domestic product increased. Finally, the result of the data envelopment analysis model showed that the effective years only accounted for 20% during the 20 years. In the inefficient years, biological resources, energy resources, pollutant emission (wastewater, gas and solid) and labor were overmuch, and the efficiency of fund usage achieved the optimal in Jiangsu Province. Therefore, improving the level of agricultural modernization, increasing the proportion of non-fossil energy, developing renewable energy and reducing pollutant emission are recommended to promote the regional sustainability.
Chinese government promotes ecological civilization in the "13th five year planning" (2016-2020) period. As a result, ecological impacts become highlight in the national circular economy practices. To apply the eco-industrial development strategy to address the intertwined industrial and regional economic development, as well as related environmental and ecological challenges is key point. Urban industrial symbiosis provides a novel approach to realize the above expectation. Traditional evaluation on circular economy provided critical
environmental insights, while to date, ecological evaluation has been rather few for urban industrial symbiosis promotion. With this circumstance, this paper developed an integrated material flows analysis (MFA) and emergy evaluation model to investigate the environmental and ecological benefits of urban industrial symbiosis implementation in one typical industrial city in China. Local oriented urban industrial symbiosis network was analyzed. Inter flows and related environmental benefits of symbiotic network were quantified with MFA, and further ecological impacts were evaluated with emergy approach and the designed emergy index. From the environmental perspective, results highlighted, in general, urban industrial symbiosis generated significant life cycle environmental benefits, especially the reduction of upstream resource mining and downstream waste disposal within the regional metabolism. In total, around 204.7 million tons ore mining, 6.9 million ton solid waste and 2.3 million tons CO2 emissions were reduced per year. From the ecological perspective, total emergy input was reduced by 1.3×1022sej, which reflected the reduction of ecological burden. Particularly, as a
key indicator for ecological lost caused by pollution, dilution emergy was decreased by 2.5×1016sej, resulting from carbon mitigation co-benefit of urban industrial symbiosis. This paper provided modeling approach to
understand the ecological benefits and trade-offs of circular economy practices, and critical insights on regional eco-industrial development.
The empower that is derived from solar, geothermal and tidal sources drives the productive processes of the geobiosphere and is responsible for developing exergy gradients (work potential) to be transformed into secondary exergy sources (wind, and chemical potential of rain water) and tertiary sources (chemical and geopotential energy of river discharges and the available energy of breaking waves). In this paper we use the geobiosphere emergy baseline (GEB) to compute transformities for secondary and tertiary renewable exergy sources. We also refine methods used to compute secondary and tertiary sources.In particular, we develop an emergy accounting procedure for landscape systems that prevents double counting. We suggest that when evaluating landscape systems, the geobiosphere tripartite (solar, tide, geothermal) solar equivalent inflows be summed, and compared to the largest of the secondary and tertiary flows. The driving energy for the landscape system is then the larger of these two values.Additionally, we suggest that defining spatial and temporal boundaries is critical to emergy evaluations. Spatial boundaries should be three dimensional and include a depth below the land surface, in order to compute geothermal exergy inflows, and a height above the land surface, to include adsorption of geostrophic winds and other atmospheric phenomena. Moreover, specifying the temporal boundaries of an analysis helps to allocate driving emergy sources properly, especially related to landscape scale analyses.
The empower that is derived from solar radiation, tidal momentum and geothermal sources drives the productive processes of the geobiosphere and is responsible for developing gradients of potential energy transformed into secondary energy and tertiary sources. In this paper we establish the geobiosphere emergy baseline (GEB) based on earlier methods proposed by Odum (2000) and refinements by Brown and Ulgiati (2010). After revising the solar exergy input and our previous interpretation of the sources and magnitudes of geothermal exergy, we compute a revised solar equivalent exergy and solar equivalence ratios (SERs) of geothermal and tidal inputs to the geobiosphere dynamic.A Monte Carlo simulation that includes the revised solar exergy flow of geothermal inputs and uncertainty in the flows yields SERs of 26,300seJJ-1 and 5500seJJ-1 for tidal and geothermal sources respectively. The solar exergy remains 3.6 E+24sejy-1, while the solar equivalent exergy of tidal and geothermal sources were 3.1 E+24seJy-1, and 5.4 E+24seJy-1 respectively, resulting in a GEB of 12.1 E+24seJy-1.
Public and private food consumption is responsible for significant environmental impacts, resulting in numerous studies that highlight the problem and reveal its magnitude at global and national scales. Drawing on a high level of data aggregation and focussing on individual choices and attitudes, current accounts stop short of grappling with the underlying complexity of the phenomenon. In this paper, we explore the conceptual value and methodological feasibility of linking Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Social Practice Theory (SPT) to apprehend household food consumption dynamics. We develop and pilot a “Practice-extended MFA” framework among selected households in Bangalore, India. While MFA modelling serves to describe and quantify all food consumption processes and related flows at the micro-level, SPT is applied to investigate how individual, technological and sociological aspects of consumption practices converge towards household food “metabolic profiles”. The results revealed a complex system of interactions between food provisioning, storage and management practices, as well as socio-cultural norms. The paper concludes by emphasizing the contribution of a reflective stance between household metabolisms and consumption practices revealing not only what and how much food is consumed and wasted, but why and in what way.
Analysis of urban metabolism has been established as an appropriate approach for assessing the sustainability of cities. A desirable next step is to use the metabolism as a guide to designing more sustainable cities. This study provides an analysis of the metabolism of four representative Toronto neighborhoods. The annual energy consumption for buildings and transport is determined to be from 57 to 107 GJ/capita and from 0.5 to 9.2 GJ/capita, respectively. The annual consumption of food and water is found to be 1,100 and 92,300 kg/capita. The findings of the study have implications for the design of sustainable neighborhoods. This includes the construction of energy-efficient buildings, development of public transit, and encouragement of residents to replace inefficient water fixtures. More advanced methods might consist of growing the urban forest using nutrients from wastewater, and converting solar energy to building operational energy.
A large number of existing buildings were demolished indiscriminately during the urban renewal process in China, significantly shortening the average lifespan of buildings. This paper measures the average service life of existing buildings based on the investigation of 1732 demolished buildings in seven communities of Jiangbei District in Chongqing from 2008 to 2010, and then explores the influencing factors for a building's lifespan with an improved Hedonic model. It is found that the average lifespan of buildings is 34 years which is much shorter than the designed lifespan. The buildings with features such as small scale, near business centers, railway station, riverside and colleges, far away from the highway, and with high speed development of economy and high level social investment in fixed assets are more likely to be demolished and hence generally short-lived. The external influencing factors are more important than the internal influencing factors. And the internal factors, other than the floor area, are less important than expected. At last, this paper concludes some suggestions for prolonging the building's lifespan from the aspects of the demolition decision making system, maintenance and adaptive reuse of the existing buildings.