The use of forest-based materials for the efficient energy of cities: Environmental and economic implications of cork as insulation material

Sierra-Pérez, Jorge; García-Pérez, Sergio; Blanc, Simone; Gabarrell, Xavier; Boschmonart-Rives, Jesús

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2017.12.008

Cited by 36 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In accordance with other authors (45,58), an economic allocation method was chosen for the environmental and economic analyses. The allocation factor was considered to be the ratio between the economic value of the cheese sold and the total values of the outputs.…”

Section: Allocation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of Four Dairy Farming Scenarios in an Alpine Environment: The Case Study of Toma di Lanzo Cheese

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The dairy sector accounts for a large share of all European agricultural production, at the same time however, it is one of the most ascribed sector contributors to the environmental impact of agriculture, particularly for greenhouse gas emissions. Simultaneously, it is a strategic sector for the economy but generates increasing debate in the community regarding the social aspects mainly related to the use of resources and the food-feed competition of livestock involving the reduction of human-edible crops. In this general framework, this study aims to compare four different dairy farming scenarios characterized by different use of environmental resources in the Alpine area, considering as a case study the production of the Toma di Lanzo cheese (a traditional cheese produced in the mountainous regions of Piedmont-Northwest Italy). The study envisaged the integrated use of three methodologies: Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Costing and the assessment of human-edible feed conversion efficiency to jointly analyze environmental, economic and social aspects. The main results of this research highlighted how the utilization of local breeds, which maximize the efficiency in the use of territory resources, such as grasslands in a mountain environment, allowed dairy production to reduce emissions, when compared to the high-input traditional breeding systems. Although the mountain livestock systems have several critical issues mainly linked to social factors such as low generational turnover, work schedules, modest life quality of families, it is however possible to earn more income than in lowland scenarios. At the same time, this production system allows the Toma di Lanzo cheese-making heritage to be preserved. This mountain pasture cheese, to which superior organoleptic and nutritional characteristics are attributable, when compared to cheeses from the valley floor, incorporates traditional values, a link to the territory and the transmission of knowledge. With reference to food-feed competition in livestock involving the reduction of the use of human-edible crops and feedstuffs in animal diets, we found that grazing and grass-based feeding systems were one of the most sustainable ways to produce milk.

show abstract

Section: Allocation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainability of Four Dairy Farming Scenarios in an Alpine Environment: The Case Study of Toma di Lanzo Cheese

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One rare study that combines a construction-related LCA with a look at the capacity of the local industry to deliver the material required-cork insulation-does not ask about the consequences of increasing the demand and supply of the material in the long run [72]. Such consequences might include land use change and increasing prices pushing existing cork users towards synthetic products.…”

Section: Competition For Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges

Hart

Pomponi

2020

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The built environment is one of the greatest contributors to carbon emissions, climate change, and to the unsustainable pressure on the natural environment and its ecosystems. The use of more timber in construction is one possible response, and an authoritative contribution to this growing movement comes from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, which identifies a “substantial increase in the use of wood in the construction of buildings” as a top priority. However, a global encouragement of such a strategy raises some difficult questions. Given the urgency of effective solutions for low-carbon built environments, and the likely continued growth in demand for timber in construction, this article reviews its sustainability and identifies future challenges and unanswered questions. Existing evidence points indeed towards timber as the lower carbon option when modelled through life cycle assessment without having to draw on arguments around carbon storage. Issues however remain on the timing of carbon emissions, land allocation, and the environmental loads and benefits associated with the end-of-life options: analysis of environmental product declarations for engineered timber suggests that landfill might either be the best or the worst option from a climate change perspective, depending on assumptions.

show abstract

“…However, this study does not consider the environmental nor economic implications. García-Pérez et al [28][29][30] study the environmental benefits at urban scale of using natural insulation in buildings retrofitting in the case of Barcelona (Spain). However, this paper does not show energy consumption savings nor economic costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heating Energy Consumption and Environmental Implications Due to the Change in Daily Habits in Residential Buildings Derived from COVID-19 Crisis: The Case of Barcelona, Spain

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The COVID-19 crisis has changed daily habits and the time that people spend at home. It is expected that this change may have environmental implications because of buildings’ heating energy demand. This paper studies the energy and environmental implications, from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, due to these new daily habits in residential buildings at their current level of thermal insulation, and in different scenarios of thermal retrofit of their envelope. This study has a building-to-building approach by using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for the residential housing stock in the case of Barcelona, Spain. The results show that a change in daily habits derived from the pandemic can increase the heating energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission in residential buildings by 182%. Retrofitting all buildings of Barcelona, according to conventional energy renovation instead of nearly Zero Energy Buildings (nZEB), will produce between 2.25 × 107 and 2.57 × 107 tons of carbon dioxide. Retrofitting the building stock using energy recovery is the option with better energy and emission savings, but also is the option with higher payback time for buildings built until 2007. The methodology presented can be applied in any city with sufficient cadastral data, and is considered optimal in the European context, as it goes for calculating the heating energy consumption.

show abstract

The use of forest-based materials for the efficient energy of cities: Environmental and economic implications of cork as insulation material

Abstract: Rives, J., The use of forest-based materials for the efficient energy of cities: environmental and economic implications of cork as insulation material.Sustainable Cities and Society

Cited by 36 publications

References 26 publications

Sustainability of Four Dairy Farming Scenarios in an Alpine Environment: The Case Study of Toma di Lanzo Cheese

Sustainability of Four Dairy Farming Scenarios in an Alpine Environment: The Case Study of Toma di Lanzo Cheese

More Timber in Construction: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges

Heating Energy Consumption and Environmental Implications Due to the Change in Daily Habits in Residential Buildings Derived from COVID-19 Crisis: The Case of Barcelona, Spain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About