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[Display omitted] Ghana has been a pioneer in energy efficiency in the sub-Saharan region, becoming the first country to introduce minimum energy performance standards and energy labelling for lighting, air conditioners and refrigerating appliances in 2008. It also introduced an innovative and not yet widely adopted policy of banning the import of used air conditioners and refrigerating appliances, mostly from Europe. While the impact of this policy package has already been assessed in terms of energy savings in Ghana, it is still unclear whether the import ban on used products makes sense in terms of environmental impact. Ghana's ban may seem surprising given that current European product policies in the context of the Green Deal aim to extend the lifetime of products and encourage their reuse to make them more sustainable. In this paper, different scenarios covering new and used refrigerating appliances as well as different end-of-life management options were examined in a life cycle analysis. The results show that exporting used refrigerators from Europe to West Africa increases their environmental impact per functional unit in many categories, even if it extends the lifetime of the product. The informal end-of-life treatment of refrigerators by open burning has a massive impact on human toxicity. As energy consumption during the use phase is the main determinant of most environmental impacts, energy efficiency policies (minimum energy efficiency performance standards and labelling) combined with an import ban on used refrigerating appliances are the best approach to reduce these impacts. It is therefore recommended that the Ghanaian policy package be replicated in other countries in the region, but also that exporting countries take action, as the fight against environmental dumping is a shared responsibility. • Used refrigerators exported to West Africa increase greenhouse gas emissions. • Energy efficiency reduces the environmental impact of refrigerators. • Import ban on used refrigerating appliances is justified. • Informal end-of-life treatment of refrigerators has a major impact on human toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement of energy efficiency of products is a key pillar of climate and energy strategy in the European Union (EU). The first EU product policies were adopted in the late 1970s, and they have evolved to become a coherent set of implementing measures under framework directives that harmonise and refine the regulatory process. After years of weak implementation, considerable progress in terms of scale and ambition has been achieved in the last decade. In 2020, product mandatory measures covered 50% of the EU total final energy consumption, leading to 46 Mtoe energy savings. This paper describes the available policy instruments to promote energy efficiency and remove the market barriers hindering the penetration of the best performing technologies. It offers a review of the progress made over these last 40 years of EU product policies, describing the Energy Labelling, the Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS), the Ecodesign Directive and the voluntary agreements (EU Ecolabel and Green Public Procurement). Moreover, it highlights the remaining challenges and provides policy recommendations to further exploit the EU potential to save energy from products. • Energy efficiency in products is a key pillar of EU climate and energy strategy. • Despite 40 years of EU product policies, their scale has only improved since 2010. • In 2020, mandatory measures covered 50% of the EU final energy consumption. • By 2030, savings expect to reduce the final consumption by 17%. • Policy orientation to further exploit the energy savings of products is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role played by independent directors and their decisions regarding the disclosure of information on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We posit that these directors (i) drive the creation of a CSR committee to advise them on social and environmental issues, and (ii) promote the use of the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines and the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards (jointly, the GRI-IFC strategy) in their CSR disclosure. The GRI-IFC strategy requires the disclosure of key indicators, and is expected to strengthen stakeholder engagement and to enhance the firm's internal monitoring. Our analysis of an unbalanced sample of 750 international companies, spanning the period 2011–2016, in which logistic and ordinal regressions are applied to the panel data, reveals a generalised absence of direct involvement by independent directors in the adoption of the GRI-IFC strategy. However, in many cases these directors promote the creation of a CSR committee to advice the board on the voluntary implementation of the GRI-IFC strategy. Our evidence shows that the CSR committee plays a mediating role in the cause-effect relationship between independent directors and their adoption of the GRI-IFC strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the significance of carbon emissions from the existing building stock, this paper aims to provide an international comparative analysis of pioneering policies on minimum energy efficiency standards in the Scottish, English/Welsh, Dutch and French commercial real estate sectors. These are the four national policy regimes to employ these policy instruments to date with varied timelines spanning from 2009 to 2050. The methodological approach employs a document review of policy texts produced by policy makers and other stakeholders. The four policy regimes are evaluated in terms of their policy design focussing on minimum performance standards, forward guidance, scope and exemptions. A key finding is that, given the range of intervening factors, side-effects and uncertainties, there are difficult choices in striking a balance between phasing implementation, providing forward guidance and adjusting policy in response to evaluation. Whilst it was initially expected that most European Union jurisdictions would default to an Energy Performance Certificate related standard, our findings show that there has been a shift towards standards that are linked to actual rather than modelled energy consumption. However, for leased stock where the owner may have limited operational control, the separation of owners' responsibility for compliance and the users' responsibility for operations makes designing consumption-based instruments more challenging. It is concluded that a central issue in policy design has been the trade-off between minimising the financial costs to property owners and occupiers of complying with performance thresholds and maximising reductions in energy consumption. There is growing recognition that regulatory economies of scale may be achieved by targeting large properties which allows for a large proportion of the total area of the stock to be covered whilst exempting a large proportion of transactions or properties. • Policy makers use MEES to improve the energy efficiency of the worst building stock. • Significant policy divergence is observed across the four national policy regimes to date. • MEES should be based on actual energy consumption rather than design-based metrics. • The separation of ownership and use is a barrier to MEES linked to actual consumption. • Regulatory economies of scale may be achieved by targeting large properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present work, Polybenzimidazole-composite membranes with graphene oxide as organic filler with different contents (0.5, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 wt%) were prepared and tested in a sulfur depolarized electrolyzer. The composite Graphene Oxide/Polybenzimidazole membranes show greater electrolyzer performance than a standard membrane. For the first time, actual hydrogen production is reported at high temperature in the range of 110 °C–140 °C for the sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolysis. In general, composite Graphene Oxide/Polybenzimidazole membranes showed superior performance, obtaining the highest hydrogen generation with the composite membrane with a content of 2 wt%. Furthermore, sulfur dioxide crossover is reported to decrease by increasing the amount of graphene oxide into the membrane, demonstrating the benefit of adding Graphene Oxide to a Polybenzimidazole matrix for the sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building sector is a significant source of GHG emissions and has great potential for emission reductions. The effectiveness of building energy codes on energy savings and emission mitigation is of a primary concern to policy makers, but uncertainty in cost and benefit in different regions complicates code selection and implementation. The impacts of a specific building energy standard vary depending on the heating system's thermal efficiency and the heating fuel's carbon intensity. This paper examines the GHG emissions due to space heating for new construction single-detached households in Canada under different building energy codes and enforcement scenarios. The two codes considered are the BC step code and Passive House criteria. Three scenarios are examined reflecting different levels of stringency of standards between 2020 and 2032. The results show both BC step code and passive house criteria can help mitigate the space heating GHG emissions. There is no significant difference between the BC step code and the passive house criteria from the perspective of GHG emission reduction in the province of British Columbia; however, when implemented nationwide, the passive house criteria is 12% more effective in abating space heating GHG emissions than the most stringent level (i.e. Step 5) of BC step code. • Passive House criteria are more effective in reducing the space heating GHG emissions than BC Step Code does in Canada. • BC Step Code and Passive House criteria can save space heating GHG emissions of new single-houses by 77% and 89%, respectively. • Building performance standards are less impactful in regions where fuel carbon intensity is low. • No notable difference is found between BC Step Code and Passive House criteria in GHG emission reduction per unit area in BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, several novel standards guide the environmental assessment work in the field of construction products. In this study, allocation methods presented in EN 15804 standard are demonstrated in a comparable manner for sawmilling products. Cradle to gate assessment was done for three European sawmills, where different allocation methods were used in manufacturing phase. Firstly, were used physical allocation (volume based) and economic allocation (value based). Secondly, manufacturing process steps were divided (subdivision) and physical and economic allocation were used for these. In the third option, used as a reference, all environmental impacts of the manufacturing stage were allocated to the main product. This study focuses on indicators for describing environmental impacts and use of primary energy. Results indicate that allocation influences how impacts are distributed to the sawmilling products. As supposed, sawn timber as main product is getting biggest impact in all cases, because of the biggest quantity in production. Physical allocation is looking volumetric distribution of the products, where economic allocation is also considering value of the products. Additional, subdivision will give more holistic approach based on different production steps together with physical or economic quantities. Based on the results, the subdivision with economic allocation or the economic allocation gives more realistic impacts to low value by-products. Subdivision with economic allocation is the most holistic option, because impacts are allocated by processes, volumes and values. Despite of all standardization work, many different assessment methods can and are still used for the environmental assessment of the building products. That has led to a situation where different datasets are not comparable with each other and this causes confusion in users of the environmental datasets. Therefore, transparent datasets are needed to avoid misunderstandings and the reporting system could be developed to be more uniform. • All relevant standards recommend avoiding allocation by using subdivision or system expansion. • When allocation must be using, allocation should divide impacts evenly to different products. • The economic allocation options give more realistic impacts to low value by-products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the process through which a construction project's implementation of green practices in its site processes influences its economic performance by meeting environmental performance standards. The uniqueness of this study stems from its focus on practices carried out on the construction sites, and the consideration of project economic performance as against corporate level performance. A conceptual model is proposed and tested using a sample of 168 construction projects completed by class A contractors in Nigeria. The data were analysed through the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. Results obtained showed that the model satisfied all the criteria for both the measurement model and structural model for formative constructs. The study results indicate that environmental performance only partially mediates the relationship between green construction site practices and economic performance. The results imply that, it is not in all occasions that a project meeting environmental performance standard will result in the construction project been economically profitable, as adopting green construction site practices could lead to economic performance without necessarily performing environmentally. It is recommended that contractors should exhibit some level of flexibility while adopting green practices on site in order to achieve a balance between green practices, environmental performance and economic performance. • Environmental performance doesn't guarantee economic performance in green projects. • Environmental performance partially mediates the relationship between green construction practice and economic performance. • Green construction projects that meet environmental performance thresholds have a 50% chance of been economically viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In analyses of urban environments, city-level sustainability assessments standards have received a lot of attention. Many countries, particularly in the developed world, have developed the standards to measure the performance of neighborhoods, districts, and cities in achieving sustainable development goals. In this study, four standards from China and the United States were selected and analyzed within the scope of green and sustainable development. China's new Assessment Standard for Green Eco-districts (ASGE) targets to support China's New-type Urbanization Plan from the conceptual stage to the concrete implementation. LEED® rating systems are one of the important references for the development of ASGE. By comparing ASGE with the advanced standards it draws from, this study aimed to evaluate ASGE's work in adapting to China's national conditions; pointing out the strengths and weaknesses and proposing improvements. The study results indicate that the rating systems of ASGE are in line with China's national conditions, and that some non-technical indicators are forward-looking, but that there is still room for improvement in terms of implementation paths, weight assignment, number of indicators, and index system. Based on these explorations, this study provides suggestions for aspects of principles and methods that could be used for the construction of similar standards in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]