An Vercalsteren

Integrating the ecodesign concept in small and medium‐sized enterprises, Experiences in the Flemish region of Belgium

In Belgium, small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are not very aware of the possibility of integrating the life cycle concept in the development of products. “Ecodesign” is more a topic of interest for larger companies. In this context, the Flemish Government, more specifically the Public Waste Agency of the Flemish Region (OVAM), launched a demonstration project, which aimed to check whether SMEs are capable of taking account of the environmental aspects of their products over the entire life cycle and creating more environment‐friendly products. The results of this project in the participating companies were fairly positive. However, the project also showed that there are several factors that influence the failure or success of ecodesign in a company. To screen the ecodesign potential of a company, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (Vito) developed a tool, called the “Quick Scan”. Another conclusion of the demonstration project was that a very important success factor for an ecodesign project is the tool the company applies to analyse the environmental impacts of the product over the entire life cycle. Anticipating this problem, Vito developed a selection scheme that allows a company to select the most appropriate tool for the environmental analysis of their products, based on a number of criteria.

Striving for a more sustainable Belgian dwelling stock

A four-year project (SuFiQuaD) started in 2007 to optimize the Belgian dwelling stock. The optimization focuses on environmental impacts, financial cost and quality aspects. The aim is to evaluate the whole life cycle of representative housing types and formulate recommendations for improvement. In a first phase the methodology has been developed and is now being applied to a limited selection of extreme dwelling types. Based on this application, the methodology will be revised and applied to representative dwelling types. This paper elaborates on the developed methodology and the first results of the implementation. The basic approach for the optimisation is to search for the highest marginal quality improvement for the additional cost. The cost consists of different aspects: initial financial cost, initial environmental cost, life cycle financial cost and life cycle environmental cost. The environmental cost is calculated by translating the environmental impact – estimated based on life cycle assessment – into financial terms. Finally, a quality evaluation is included. This is considered as an essential part of the analysis since a good quality is a requirement for sustainability, but moreover, the inclusion of the evaluation of the performance of a building enables comparative analysis.

Improving footprint calculations of small open economies: combining local with multi-regional input–output tables

ABSTRACT In a small, open and resource-poor economy, import and export dependency have an ever-growing impact on local policy decisions, which makes local (environmental) policy-makers increasingly depend on global data. This increases the interest in models that link local production and consumption data to global production, trade and environmental data. The recent increase in availability of global environmentally extended multi-regional input-output tables (EE-MRIO tables) provides an opportunity to link them with existing local environmentally extended input-output tables (EE-RIO tables). These combined tables make it possible (1) to analyse the links between local and global production and consumption and (2) to study global value chains, material use and environmental impacts simultaneously. However, estimations using input-output (I–O) analyses contain errors due to imperfect databases. In this article the magnitude of specification, aggregation and time errors are estimated and compared. The results show the need to combine local datasets with multi-regional ones and show that highest detailed (country and sector levels) as well as time series of I–O tables are the way forward for using I–O analyses in local policy-making. The paper provides guidance on trading off investments in model adoption and/or extension and the reliability of estimation results.