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In recent years, it has become essential to consider the total carbon footprint of a construction project. Commonly, the question has been: ’What is the best material to be used in this context?’ In this paper we argue that this question is incomplete, not taking the complexity of design choices into consideration. This paper intends to share light on how to analyse some factors that influence the construction of buildings in order to contribute to climate change mitigation, taking this complexity into consideration. Calculation of fossil greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for two load-bearing structures for office buildings in 4, 8 and 16 storeys with equal functional requirements; e.g. load bearing capacity, acoustic performance, fire resistance and adaptability are addressed. The main materials for the load-bearing structures are cross laminated timber (CLT) elements and precast concrete elements respectively. The result show that one cannot on a general basis conclude that either type of load-bearing structure cause less fossil GHG emissions. It is always important to consider the building design, functionality as well as external conditions such as location when considering different load-bearing structure materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigation actions in all sectors of society, including sports, to limit global warming have become an increasingly hot topic in public discussions and sports management. However, so far, there has been a lack of understanding and practical examples of how these organizations, especially in team sports, can holistically assess and reduce their climate impacts to achieve carbon neutrality. This paper presents a carbon footprint assessment, implemented actions for GHG emission reduction, and offers the example of a professional Finnish ice hockey team that achieved carbon neutrality. The study is based on a life cycle assessment method. The Results show that the team's carbon footprint was reduced from 350 tCO 2eq by more than 50% between seasons 2018–2019 and 2021–2022 in the assessed categories. The most GHG emission reductions were achieved in the team's and spectators' mobility and ice hall energy consumption. Furthermore, the team compensated for their remaining emissions to achieve carbon neutrality. Multiple possibilities for further GHG emission reductions were recognized. The majority of the GHG emissions were linked to the Scope 3 category, indicating that co-operation with partners and stakeholders was a key to success in attaining carbon neutrality. This paper also discusses the possible limitations and challenges that sport organizations face in assessing climate impacts and reducing GHG emissions, as well as the prospects of overcoming them. Since there are many opportunities for sports to contribute to climate change mitigation, relevant targets and actions to reduce GHG emissions should be integrated into all sport organizations' management. [Display omitted] • This the first assessment of professional ice hockey team's carbon footprint. • Multiple actions led to a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. • Concludes how sport organizations can manage their environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, many cities have engaged in efforts to become more sustainable. These efforts often are translated into measures to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, leading to a proliferation of standards and methods. Discrepancies exist between these various accounting approaches in terms of the definition of system boundaries, allocation procedures, quality of data, and the reporting and verification of results. This paper examines some of the most important theoretical and practical issues and challenges of urban-related GHG accounting and highlights how existing approaches deal with these. Three different GHG emission accounting standards are compared and critically analysed: the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GPC), Bilan Carbone and ISO 14064-1:2018. The Organizational Environmental Footprint (OEF) and a previous analysis about footprinting performed by the European Commission are used as analytical lenses. Based on this analysis, suggestions are made for enhancing comprehensiveness and transparency, and providing guidelines for driving cities towards a more low-carbon path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonisation of stationary energy supply, particularly electricity grids, is the current focus of climate change mitigation policy. However, studies have suggested that this narrow policy focus is insufficient to achieve meaningful global emissions reductions. Using Iceland as a case study, this paper demonstrates that significant emissions arise from transport and imported products, which are often not fully captured in territorial GHG inventories. This results in high greenhouse gas emissions per capita regardless of the nation's domestic energy supply. The result is a low carbon illusion in which rich economies believe they are reducing their GHG responsibility whilst global emissions continue to grow. This paper presents the first consumption-based carbon footprint (CBCF) analysis for Iceland, a nation where the stationary energy supply is 99% renewable, and could be viewed as a decarbonisation ‘future case’ for rich nations globally. The study combines Icelandic household expenditure data with the Multi-Regional Input-Output database Eora to calculate the CBCF of Icelandic households. The average annual CBCF of Icelandic households was 10.4 tCO 2 eq/capita, similar in magnitude to other EU nations despite Iceland's unique energy supply. GHG emissions from transport, food and goods dominated the household CBCF. The national CBCF was higher than most European nations and 55% higher than the territorial emissions inventory. Approximately 71% of household emissions were attributed to imported goods, which were mapped globally revealing that the GHG emissions burden of Icelandic consumption falls primarily on developing nations. The findings suggest that a broader GHG accounting framework and resulting policy focus is required, both in Iceland and globally, that incorporates both supply and demand-based GHG reduction strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cuajimalpa campus of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) is located in the western region of Mexico City. In 2016, its global average population (students, faculty and staff) was around 2750 people. Campus policies include sustainability as one of its main aims. To evaluate and eventually reduce the environmental impact of the campus, its greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory was assessed and the carbon footprint was calculated, using the GHG protocol (GHGP): Scope 1: direct GHG emissions; Scope 2: indirect GHG emissions; and Scope 3: other indirect GHG emissions, on a calendar year basis. Scope 1 includes mobile and stationary sources and leakage of refrigerants; Scope 2 includes electrical energy usage; Scope 3 includes consumption of paper, food, water, gases, cleaning products, solvents, wastewater treatment, municipal and hazardous wastes and academic travel. In 2016, the campus produced around 3000 tons of CO2 equivalent, with Scope 1, 2 and 3 accounting for 4%, 24% and 72%, respectively. Emissions analysis by activity indicated 51% for commuting; 24% for electricity usage; 14% for academic travel; 11% for other activities. The inventory will aid the establishment of policies for reduction and mitigation of GHG, resulting in environmental and potential economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic materials industries together with the utility sector account for significant carbon footprints and are challenged to meet emerging Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets. The emitting processes are often co-located in industrial parks, resulting in spatially concentrated, stationary carbon dioxide emissions. Given the multitude of sources from which carbon dioxide could be captured and of possible sinks in which carbon dioxide could be utilized or stored, there is a need to systematically screen the lowest cost footprint reduction options for a given industrial park. This paper presents the first approach to the systematic design of low cost carbon integration networks for industrial parks through integrated analysis of sources, utilization and storage options, as well as capture, separation, compression and transmission options. The paper outlines the optimisation-based approach and illustrates its application with an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are mainly responsible for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere and thus for climate change. The European Union (EU) set up a series of strategies and policies to facilitate the elaboration of climate change mitigation and adaptation of urban plans. To do this, it is necessary to measure the city's GHG emission level. The Urban Carbon Footprint (UCF) and its derivation, the Relative Carbon Footprint (RCF), represent the most appropriate tools for obtaining this important information. The present paper applies these indicators to a small city (150 000 inhabitants) located in Southern Italy, a novelty for academic studies, which usually concentrate on megacities. The study focuses only on CO 2 emissions, as these represent 90% of the total GHGs released in urban areas. The findings showed that in 2015 the total UCF was equal to 288 ktCO 2 , specifically deriving from electricity and natural gas consumption. Moreover, Residential, Industry and Tertiary are the most carbon-intensive economic sectors. The RCF was equal to 0.30; the city emission levels were lower than the national average. Therefore, the municipality represents a typical “net-consumer” community, dominated by homes with territorial emissions due to consumption and characterized by a low number of industries and an average income per capita that is 50% lower than the national one. Starting from these results, the study proposed an urban action plan according to the EU mitigation and adaptation policies. This plan could help the local government improve its environmental sustainability, even if more public city-level data is required for a more comprehensive analysis. Finally, it would be more appropriate for all actions to be aligned under a unique policy process to seize the opportunity to link the various local intervention policies from different fields, taking into account their existing funding, tools, processes, and resources. Capitalizing on the adaptation/mitigation connection will allow municipalities to leverage their climate change action efforts and accelerate progress toward their climate and energy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many opportunities for consumers to design their lives more sustainably. While a rapidly growing body of literature has investigated how consumers can reduce carbon footprints in key consumption areas, such as food, housing and mobility, an overall framework that allows structuring those options across all consumption areas is still missing. Hence, this paper presents a novel and systematic framework to identify improvement options that promote climate change mitigation and structure them based on their primary mode of impact on GHG emissions. The framework targets consumer practices and focuses on ambitious, but technically and socioeconomically feasible strategies for consumers to lower their carbon footprint. Four major categories for reducing consumption-based emissions form the basic framework, which are then subdivided into behavioural strategies and sub-strategies. The practical application of the framework is illustrated by using food consumption as an example. Systematically identifying improvement options can advance a holistic understanding of the range of behavioural strategies targeting consumer choices that operate at different stages in the supply chain. It thus provides a starting point for addressing critical questions related to the role of consumers in supporting climate change mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decreasing household size is a global trend, driven by urbanization and multiple other socioeconomic trends. Going solo poses a great environmental challenge, as the possibility to benefit from scale economies in consumption and its greenhouse gas impacts is not taken advantage of. In other words, understanding of intra-household sharing patterns of different consumption categories is increasingly important in climate change mitigation. This paper explores the relationship between household sizes, urban structures, and greenhouse gas impacts of lifestyles. When urban areas grow outwards, the household sizes also grow. As a result of this, the increase in intra-household sharing seems to alleviate the negative GHG implications of urban sprawl, which is highly logical but yet not comprehended. Thus, the rise of collaborative consumption offers potential to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of solo dwellers, and compensate for the lower intra-household sharing with inter-household sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the heated discussion of climate change and the ever-increasing demand for fossil fuels, the ability to reduce vehicular carbon footprints is of great importance for both environmental and economical reasons. This paper presents a carbon-footprint/fuel-consumption-aware variable-speed limit (FC-VSL) traffic control scheme that targets minimizing the average vehicular fuel consumption on freeways under live traffic conditions. We first formulated the problem of minimizing fuel consumption for a single vehicle under certain traffic conditions as an optimal control problem. By solving the problem, we obtained the optimal vehicular trajectory, which results in minimum fuel consumption. Then, we designed the FC-VSL scheme based on the optimal trajectory. We evaluated the performance of the FC-VSL scheme through detailed simulation. The results show that the FC-VSL scheme can significantly reduce the average fuel consumption and outperform another speed limit scheme that was designed to smooth traffic flow without considering fuel consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: With increasing demand for air transportation worldwide and decreasing marginal fuel efficiency improvements, the contribution of aviation to climate change relative to other sectors is projected to increase in the future. As a result, growing public and political pressures are likely to further target air transportation to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The key challenges faced by policy makers and air transportation industry stakeholders is to reduce aviation greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining mobility for passengers and time-sensitive cargo as well as meeting future demand for air transportation in developing and emerging countries. This paper examines five generic policies for reducing the emissions of commercial aviation; (1) technological efficiency improvements, (2) operational efficiency improvements, (3) use of alternative fuels, (4) demand shift and (5) carbon pricing (i.e. market-based incentives). In order to evaluate the impacts of these policies on total emissions, air transport mobility, airfares and airline profitability, a system dynamics modeling approach was used. The Global Aviation Industry Dynamics (GAID) model captures the systemic interactions and the delayed feedbacks in the air transportation system and allows scenarios testing through simulations. For this analysis, a set of 34 scenarios with various levels of aggressiveness along the five generic policies were simulated and tested. It was found that no single policy can maintain emissions levels steady while increasing projected demand for air transportation. Simulation results suggest that a combination of the proposed policies does produce results that are close to a “weak” sustainability definition of increasing supply to meet new demand needs while maintaining constant or increasing slightly emissions levels. A combination of policies that includes aggressive levels of technological and operations efficiency improvements, use of biofuels along with moderate levels of carbon pricing and short-haul demand shifts efforts achieves a 140% increase in capacity in 2024 over 2004 while only increasing emissions by 20% over 2004. In addition, airline profitability is moderately impacted (10% reduction) compared to other scenarios where profitability is reduced by over 50% which pose a threat to necessary investments and the implementation of mitigating measures to reduce CO2 emissions. This study has shown that an approach based on a portfolio of mitigating measures and policies spanning across technology and operational improvements, use of biofuels, demand shift and carbon pricing is required to transition the air transportation industry close to an operating point of environmental and mobility sustainability. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent studies have proposed that the consumption of farmed animal products must be curtailed to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This paper argues that a careful assessment of the different emissions produced by different actual and potential diets is needed to evaluate whether or not restricting the consumption of farmed animal products could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and if so, by how much. It is also argued that the question of whether or not the consumption of farmed animal products should be restricted must be addressed in the light of information derived from various sustainability indicators, rather than on the basis of a narrow focus on greenhouse gas emissions. A case study from the UK is used to develop a broader understanding of how dietary modifications might reduce a range of problems associated with the consumption of farmed animal products. It is argued that even more comprehensive studies of the different Global Health Impacts (GHIs) are needed to assess the merits and demerits associated with the consumption of farmed animal products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]