Stefan Gößling-Reisemann

Critical materials and dissipative losses: A screening study

This study deals with dissipative losses of critical materials between the life-cycle stages of manufacturing and end-of-life. Following the EU definition for critical materials, a screening of dissipative losses for the respective materials has been performed based on existing data and the most significant data gaps have been identified. Furthermore, a classification scheme for dissipative losses (dissipation into environment, dissipation into other material flows, dissipation to landfills) and for assessing their degree has been developed and a first qualitative assessment applying this classification scheme has been performed. In combination with existing criticality assessments, the results can be used to generate a map of metals indicating future research needs for analyzing metal dissipation in detail. The results include quantitative estimates of dissipative losses (where feasible) along the chosen life-cycle stages, and discuss research needs for analysis and avoidance of dissipative losses for improved resource efficiency.

What is Resource Consumption and How Can it Be Measured

When analyzing the metabolism of our economy, the usual choice for a measure of resource consumption is the throughput of matter and energy. This, however, cannot be sufficient, since consumption by definition is always relating to the destruction or transformation, and hence a change in quality, not only in quantity, of material or energy flows. Here, an approach is presented that takes the entropy production associated with any process as a measure for the resource consumption of that process. Entropy production is thereby used to approximate the intuitive notion of consumption, which can best be described by the term loss of potential utility. This article delivers theoretical evidence for the validity of this choice, and a second article in a future issue will present an application taken from the metallurgical sector. The related concept of exergy analysis is discussed and compared against the entropy approach.

Climate Change and Structural Vulnerability of a Metropolitan Energy System

In this article, we present methodology and results of a vulnerability assessment of the energy system of the metropolitan region Bremen�?Oldenburg in Northwest Germany. This work is part of the regional climate adaptation project “nordwest2050�? aiming at innovative solutions toward a climate�?proof and resilient region. Methodologically, we extended the established vulnerability assessment based on climate change impacts by a structural analysis, highlighting general weaknesses of the metropolitan energy system. Our findings indicate that the structural vulnerabilities of the energy system around Bremen�?Oldenburg pose a greater threat to maintaining the systems services than climate change itself. Climate�?change–based vulnerabilities, however, aggravate many of the structural vulnerabilities and therefore demand attention in their own right. The structural vulnerabilities mainly originate from political and regulatory uncertainties, turbulent market conditions, conflicts along the supply chains, and the current dynamics in the energy sector induced by increased climate mitigation efforts. One of our main conclusions is thus that the metropolitan energy systems capabilities to handle turbulence, perturbations, and surprises must be improved. This will also help in reducing the climate�?change vulnerabilities, because such a system is better equipped when facing currently hard�?to�?predict changes in climate parameters. The results of the assessment described here will be used as the starting point to find options for innovations toward a climate�?proof and resilient energy system for the region in the course of the remaining project.

Entropy as a Measure for Resource Consumption — Application to Primary and Secondary Copper Production

A great step towards the practical application of the concept of sustainable development was made by the formulation of four basic rules for the management of substances (Daly & Cobb, 1989) based on the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (UNCED, 1993). These rules were supplemented with a fifth rule by the Enquete Commission of the German Bundestag on ‘Protection of Humanity and the Environment’ in 1994 (Enquete-Kommission, 1994). The five rules specify how the use of natural resources and the input of substances to the environment should be managed in order to preserve the functionality of nature as a supplier of resources and an absorber of residuals from economic activities. However, these rules need to be further specified to derive operational guidelines for the decision-makers on the global, regional and local level. Tools have to be developed that aid in the assessment of the progress towards sustainability on these levels. Introducing the concept of sustainable development thus opens a wide range of questions addressed to all members of humanity as to how it can be put into practice. Some of these questions must be answered by natural scientists, since they require quantitative answers which have to be derived from measurements performed on the metabolism of the technosphere. One of the research fields especially apt for the physical sciences is the measurement of the quantities mentioned in the five rules of sustainable development: depletion and renewal rates of resources, consumption (or use) of resources, inputs of substances to the environment, time scales of interventions in the environment, and time scales of reactions of the environment. In a PhD thesis at the University of Hamburg (Gosling, 2001), the aspect of resource use was investigated aiming at the development of an adequate measure. Based on

Natur als Vorbild

Biomimetische Losungen transportieren das Versprechen auf eine grosere Naturvertraglich keit. Schlusselargumente sind dabei seit Jahrmillionen erprobte Losungen, die sich evolu tionar durchgesetzt haben. Sie bieten damit auch eine Chance fur die Industrial Ecology.

Entropy analysis of metal production and recycling

Purpose – The paper attempts to address both resource consumption and recycling effectiveness, using concepts from thermodynamics: entropy production for evaluating the costs (resource consumption) and statistical entropy for evaluating the benefits (separation of materials) of recycling processes.Design/methodology/approach – Resource consumption, in this context, is to be understood as the overall thermodynamic devaluation of matter and energy flows. The recycling effectiveness, on the other hand, can be measured by the processs ability to reduce the “mixedness” of the material flows, using statistical entropy (entropy of mixing) as an indicator. Statistical entropy has been used by others as an indicator for the performance of waste separation processes, and its application to metal recycling seems straightforward. Entropy production has been applied as a measure for resource consumption in copper production. Here, the two concepts are combined to reach an expression describing the resource efficiency...

Stakeholder-Informed Ecosystem Modeling of Ocean Warming and Acidification Impacts in the Barents Sea Region

Climate change and ocean acidification are anticipated to alter marine ecosystems, with consequences for the provision of marine resources and ecosystem services to human societies. However, considerable uncertainties about future ecological changes and ensuing socio-economic impacts impede the identification of societal adaptation strategies. In a case study from the Barents Sea and Northern Norwegian Sea region, we integrated stakeholder perceptions of ecological changes and their significance for societies with the current state of scientific knowledge, to investigate the marine-human system under climate change and identify societal adaptation options. Stakeholders were engaged through personal interviews, two local workshops, and a web based survey, identifying the most relevant ecosystem services potentially impacted: food provision through fisheries, tourism and recreation, and carbon uptake and export. An integrated system dynamics model was developed which links climate change scenarios to the response of relevant species. The model structure was developed in line with stakeholder perceptions of temperature-dependent multiannual fluctuations of fish stocks, interactions among fish, marine mammal and seabird populations, and ecological processes such as primary production. The model was used for a discourse-based stakeholder evaluation of potential ecosystem changes under ocean warming and acidification scenarios, identifying shifts in ecosystem service provision and discussing associated societal adaptation options. The results pointed to differences in adaptive capacity among user groups. Small-scale fishers and tourism businesses are potentially more affected by changing spatial distribution and local declines in marine species than industrial fisheries. Changes in biodiversity, especially extinctions of polar species, and ecosystem functioning were a concern from an environmental conservation viewpoint. When considering potential additional impacts of ocean acidification, changes observed in the model projections were more uniformly valued as negative, and associated with an increased potential for conflicts among user groups. The stakeholder-informed ecosystem modelling approach has succeeded in driving a discussion and interchange among stakeholder groups and with scientists, broadening knowledge about climate change impacts in the social-ecological system and identifying important factors that shape societal responses. The approach can thus serve to improve governance of marine systems by incorporating knowledge about system dynamics and about societal uses and values.

Combining LCA with Thermodynamics

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most promising methodology to assess environmental impacts of products, services and processes. Its scope of application is constantly evolving, including e.g. application to regional scales and assessing societal consumption patterns. Apart from considering environmental impacts, extensions to the methodology including social and economic impacts are currently being discussed. One of those impacts is resource consumption. It has been argued that the methods for assessing resource consumption in LCA must come from thermodynamics, and must take account of the second law of thermodynamics (entropy law). The challenge arising from this, especially in respect to its applications and software implementation, is the increase in data requirements. While already being a data intensive methodology, including a thermodynamic measure for resource consumption in LCA will increase the data that needs to be handled significantly. This can only be managed by employing thermodynamic data bases and combining these with dedicated LCA software. I will present an approach that makes use of the scriptability of commercial LCA software (Umberto?) and combines LCA data with thermodynamic data where values are stored in a parameterized form. The script then calculates the thermodynamically defined resource consumption and makes it available to the visualization and analysis tools in the LCA software. Processes from the metallurgical sector serve as an illustrative case study.

Fundamentale Resilienzstrategien für die Stromversorgung erforderlich

Durch den verstarkten Einsatz von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik im Bereich der Energie versorgung wird diese verwundbarer gegenuber Ausfallen und Storungen. Um dies zu verhindern, sind Veranderungen notwendig, die fundamentale Aspekte der Systemarchitektur betreffen.

Forschung für Nachhaltigkeit im Verbund – dargestellt am Beispiel: Deutsches Netzwerk Industrial Ecology

Dieser Beitrag zielt auf die Forschung fur Nachhaltigkeit im Verbund verschiedener akademischer Akteure, als Erganzung zu Forschungsaktivitaten innerhalb einer Institution. Als praxisnahes und aktuelles Beispiel wird hier das Deutsche Netzwerk Industrial Ecology herangezogen und anhand seiner Besonderheiten in der Forschung fur Nachhaltigkeit naher beleuchtet. Das Deutsche Netzwerk Industrial Ecology ist ein Gemeinschaftsvorhaben, initiiert von der Universitat Bremen und der Vereinigung fur okologische Wirtschaftsforschung (VOW), Berlin, mit Unterstutzung der Hochschule Munchen. Mehr als 20 fuhrende Akteure zur Industrial Ecology in Deutschland sind als Forschungsinstitutionen eingebunden. Den gemeinsamen thematischen Kern bildet das einzelne Disziplinen verbindende Forschungs- und Handlungsfeld der Industrial Ecology. Gerade der Disziplinen ubergreifende und verbindende Charakter der Industrial Ecology hat die Netzwerkbildung forschungsaktiver Hochschulen in einem Akteursverbund und einer einzelne Hochschulen verbindenden Weise begunstigt. Die thematischen Schwerpunkte im Netzwerk konzentrieren sich auf die Bereiche: Wissenschaft und Forschung, Management und Transfer in die Praxis, Lehre und Bildung sowie industrielle Anwendungen, von der Produktentwicklung und Prozessgestaltung uber betriebliche und uberbetriebliche Aspekten wie z. B. lokale Kreislaufwirtschaft, regionales Stoffstrommanagement, Industriesymbiosen, bis hin zu branchenbezogenen, nationalen und internationalen Themen des Metabolismus und der Mensch-Natur-Beziehungen, so wie sie fur die Industrial Ecology charakteristisch sind. Diese hohe Anschlussfahigkeit begunstigt den Zusammenschluss in einem hochschulubergreifenden, einzelne Akteure und Institutionen verbindenden Verbund.