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Global climatic change is driving research and development in low emissions technologies. One such technology is the use of charcoal from biomass in steelmaking. This paper adapts social life cycle assessment methodologies to analyse the social dimensions of energy supply alternatives in steelmaking using regionalised production scenarios in Australia. Three energy supply alternatives are investigated: charcoal produced from Radiata pine plantation forestry; charcoal produced from Mallee eucalypt revegetation on agricultural land; and metallurgical coal. Impact indicators analysed include land-use, employment, workplace health & safety and a qualitative analysis of identified stakeholder issues. The research finds that biomass alternatives are significant generators of direct employment at the regional level; have concomitantly higher rates of workplace injuries and represent a significant change in land-use. Charcoal produced from Mallee biomass planted as a conservation measure on farmland, however, has the benefit of representing a shared land-use that provides an additional farm revenue stream and assists dryland salinity management. The paper finds that full substitution of coal by pine or Mallee charcoal does not provide a unique solution for optimising the social performance of the energy supply alternatives across all indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to significant weather variabilities of rainfalls, potential water savings through rainwater tanks are expected to vary significantly. Moreover, within some large cities, significant spatial variations are reported. With the emerging impacts of climate change, existing weather and spatial variabilities of potential water savings are also likely to be changed, which are unknown to the end-users. This paper presents the impacts of climate change on current weather and spatial variabilities of potential water savings for Adelaide, a large city in Australia. Future daily rainfall data was collected from a data portal provided by the Australian government derived through a statistical downscaling modelling. Projected daily rainfall data was fed to an earlier developed daily water balance model (eTank) to calculate water savings for three future periods; 2030–2050, 2055–2075 and 2080–2100. Three weathers (dry, average and wet) in each period were considered along with two climate change scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and two tank sizes (5 kL and 10 kL). It is found that varying outcomes without any general trend are expected depending on the projection scenario, period and weather condition. Contrary to the general perception, it is found that in several cases, the potential water savings are expected to increase compared to the current climate. Most of those expected increases in water savings are attributed to the projection scenario of RCP 4.5, in the near future and in dry years. In the far-future and with the projection scenario of RCP 8.5, most of the potential water savings are expected to decrease compared to the current climate. Regarding changes in spatial variability of water savings, it is found that the spatial variability will decrease in the near future, but will increase towards the far future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]