The geobiosphere emergy baseline: A synthesis

Brown, Mark T.; Campbell, Daniel E.; Ulgiati, Sérgio; Franzese, Pier Paolo

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2016.09.009

Cited by 57 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…EMA also has shortcomings from the perspective of accuracy. Criticism mainly comes from the fields of economics, physics, and engineering [15][16][17]. This has restricted the development of EMA theory.…”

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the EMA needs to improve the environmental effect assessment of the target system. Direct environmental impacts caused by resources, services, or products are incorporated into EMA data accounting [17]. However, it is not possible to use EMA to analyze direct or indirect environmental impacts specifically like LCA, which are caused by resource consumption, waste, or pollutant emissions, such as potential harm to the human body, ecological health, etc.…”

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since the natural resources and climatic conditions of target system locations are different, and the emergy data has distinct regional characteristics, there is a localization problem of Unit Emergy Value (UEV). So far there are few clear and accurate UEV models to cope with this problem and no standard processing methods for model uncertainty analysis [17,18]. Third, EMA is greatly influenced by subjective factors in the determination of system boundaries and the choice of condition-assuming methods, and lacks the uncertainty analysis of emergy data, which affects the data's accuracy.…”

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After years of development, new emergy indicators have been continuously proposed to achieve assessments for different ecosystems, such as Renewable Percentage (%Re) [22], Energy Recovery Ratio (ERR) [23], Emergy Benefit after Exchange (EBE) [24], Net Profit (NP) [25], etc. As an effective tool for environmental management and policy planning [17], EMA has been widely used in a variety of macroscopic systems, such as agricultural systems [26][27][28][29], industrial systems [30][31][32], urban systems [33][34][35], etc. In addition, EMA is also widely used in the micro-system level, such as food production [36], energy supply [37,38], ecosystem services [39], waste disposal [40,41], and so on.…”

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

Wang

Xiao

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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Two methods of natural ecosystem assessment—emergy analysis (EMA) and life cycle assessment (LCA)—are reviewed in this paper. Their advantages, disadvantages, and application areas are summarized, and the similarities and differences between these two evaluation methods are analyzed respectively. Their research progress is also sorted out. The study finds that EMA and LCA share common attributes in evaluation processes and research fields, but they focus on different aspects of macrocosms and microcosms. The assessment of system sustainability is valued by both EMA and LCA, but the former has unique advantages in natural system input analysis, and the latter is more convincing in assessing environmental loading capacity. If the system boundaries of the two methods are expanded, in other words, factors such as ecosystem services, labor, and infrastructure construction are integrated into the upstream of the target system, and environmental impact is further analyzed using LCA in the downstream of the system, the two approaches would complete each other. The quantified results would be more objective. Therefore, these two theories have the necessity of coupling development. After reviewing recent coupling application cases, the results show that LCA and EMA have commonality in the upstream of the target system (mainly in inventory database construction), while the environmental impact assessment methods are different in the downstream. So the overall coupling analysis method is not formed. The current paper gives rational suggestions on the coupling development of the two systems in terms of the aggregate emergy flow table, the indicator system construction and indicator evaluation methods. In addition, it is necessary to introduce sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analysis in order to improve the reliability of assessment results. At present, the research on the coupling development of the two theories is in rapid development stage, but there are still many problems that need further exploration.

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Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ema Theory and Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

Wang

Xiao

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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show abstract

“…In the majority of cases this was 15.83E+24 seJ/yr (Odum, 2000) but the baseline values of 9.44E+24seJ/yr (Odum, 1996), 9.26e+24seJ/yr (Campbell, et al, 2005), and 15.2 E+24seJ/yr (Brown & Ulgiati, 2010) were also used. The authors have updated all values to reflect the new emergy baseline of 12E+24seJ/yr (Brown, et al, 2016). Table 3 then shows aggregated inflows and the differences between the two scenarios, namely the sources of operational energy and roof construction as outlined in Section 4.2 and 4.3.…”

Section: Emergy Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Clark’s Crow: A design plugin to support emergy analysis decision making towards sustainable urban ecologies

Keena

Raugei

Etman

et al. 2018

Ecological Modelling

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Architects working with city planners and developers in the shaping of urban environments typically consider multiple factors in isolation, from urban design and socioeconomic relationships to data analyses. Analyses regarding urban life cycle scenarios are exemplar of this trend, with considerations made in isolation at the later stages of the designdevelopment process when the scope for decisions which could ultimately affect the sustainability of an urban environment is much more limited. This paper defines our effort to introduce a new tool, named "Clark's Crow", which aims to address this shortcoming by promoting awareness of the impact of different design options through a biophysically based ecological accounting method in the early stages of urban design-development. The tool is used within existing architectural design environments with an aim to offer a socio-ecological analysis during the design decision-making process. Clark's Crow is underpinned by the emergy analysis method, which aims to consider both the energy, material, and information flows of a system, such as an urban ecology, and to understand both the work of the techno-sphere in constructing our urban environments and that of the geo-biosphere in sustaining such development. Clark's Crow facilitates emergy analysis in the early stages of urban design, thereby allowing queries

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Comparison of the sustainability of bean production systems based on emergy and economic analyses

Asgharipour

Shahgholi

Campbell

et al. 2018

Environ Monit Assess

Self Cite

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To address increasing demand, bean producers have intensified agricultural activities by increasing application of industrial inputs. Such intensification can impose environmental risks to vulnerable ecosystems. Emergy and economic analyses were utilized in this study to investigate and comparison of environmental performance of five management patterns specified by differing degrees of intensification, i.e., ecologic, integrated, low-, medium-and high-input production systems at Bean Research Station in Khorram Dasht, Iran. The total emergy supporting these systems was estimated to be 6.52E+15, 1.22E+16, 6.62E+15, 1.10E+16 and 1.54E+16 sej ha −1 for the ecologic, integrated, low-, medium-and high-input systems, respectively. The purchased emergy inputs accounted for the largest portion of the total emergy inputs to these systems and ranged between 60.84 and 75.80%. The renewable fractions, transformities, emergy yield ratios, environmental loading ratios, emergy sustainability indices, and the economic output to input ratios demonstrate that the ecologic and low-input systems performed well compared to the three more industrial systems when considering their environmental sustainability. However, the more industrial systems had comparatively higher economic output. Generally, the results illustrate that sustainable bean production will depend on the transition from fossil fuel intensive systems to more natural resource intensive ones. To achieve more sustainable systems, applying conservation tillage and replacing chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer are advocated for use in bean

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The geobiosphere emergy baseline: A synthesis

Cited by 57 publications

References 37 publications

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

Review of Emergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment: Coupling Development Perspective

Clark’s Crow: A design plugin to support emergy analysis decision making towards sustainable urban ecologies

Comparison of the sustainability of bean production systems based on emergy and economic analyses

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