Search

Abstract The impact of human civilization on the environment is now obvious. With the rapidly growing human population, the problem of human consumption becomes more and more urgent. It is therefore necessary to try to change the patterns of human life and find a more sustainable way of living. To achieve the goal of sustainable society efficiently, it is crucial to identify hot spots for possible impact reduction. Even though several tools now exist, such as footprint calculators, they usually have a narrow perspective, calculating impact only on a single environmental problem. In this study, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was employed, to measure the environmental impact of human consumption across the entire life-cycle as well as a wide range of impact categories. The use of LCA to identify the major problems of personal consumption is presented in a case study of an average inhabitant of the Czech Republic. Data of average personal consumption were collected and an LCA model was created in GaBi 8 software. Characterization results, obtained using ReCiPe 2016 (E) methodology, show the environmentally dominant segments of consumption which are: household energy consumption – where the dominant process is heating; and food consumption – where the dominant processes are meat and dairy production. This study provides a thorough impact analysis and identifies the hots spots, where actions should be taken. The results provide the necessary basic data for policy-makers, so that steps to reduce individual personal environmental impact can be taken. Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image Highlights • The ecological crisis is linked to growing population and consumption. • Effective change of personal consumption patterns is necessary for sustainability. • Proposal of LCA as a tool for calculation of personal environmental impact • Energy consumption and food consumption show the biggest environmental impact. • Diet change shows highest potential for the environmental impact reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The December 2013 Medium Combustion Plants Directive (MCP Directive) proposal was evaluated by the national governments. In the Czech Republic, there are 6710 plants affected by this Directive, which is about 4.6% of the total of 143,000 relevant European plants. The paper introduces our approach of policy impact assessment called SimTool. The costs estimated for the European Commission in the background study (AMEC, 2014) are assumed to reach EUR 5.9 million for the Czech Republic for the preferred scenario by the European Commission. Further presented national impact assessment estimates the induced annual costs of the proposal at EUR 61 million, which is about 10 times greater than the European impact assessment estimate. As part of the national impact assessment, the different fuel categories had to be analyzed separately due to their specific features and different options for achieving the emission limit target values. During the impact assessment, a survey was made in order to determine the source operators’ preferences and responses to the potential adoption of the MCP Directive. Based on the analysis of data from the operators and consultations with experts about the different technologies, technical options for achievement of the proposed emission limits, including an estimate of the operating and investment costs, were proposed. The paper concentrates on the Czech impact assessment approach and discusses the reasons of the discrepancy between the European impact assessment and the Czech version. We argue that the inaccuracies of the European impact assessments are given by usage of the general abatement cost curves in the models which do not reflect the reality sufficiently. This paper states an argument for the necessity to carry out analysis at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of renewable energy sources has been primarily justified on the ground of environmental policies and energy security, but new jobs opportunities and establishment of new economy sectors may be equally important co-benefits from investments in this sector. The main goal of this paper is to assess the employment benefits of investments in renewable energy in the Czech Republic. We examine the level and rate of the development of the renewable energy sector in the Czech Republic in terms of ('green‘) job creation for the period 2008–2013, in comparison to data from other EU countries, including Germany as a leading early investor in renewables. Whilst the deployment of renewable energy in the Czech Republic has succeeded to create a significant number of jobs (more than 20 000 employees in 2010), our analysis illustrates a strong dependency of job creation on the continuation of financial incentives. We also find that biomass and waste energy processing offer the highest employment per MWh, which benefits employment in (economically fragile) rural areas. We discuss the question of competitiveness of a country that was not amongst the early adopters of renewables, arguing that the technical skills of the labour force in the Czech Republic provide a potential for more sustained investments in the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manifestations of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent in Central Europe where many municipalities remain unprepared for upcoming challenging times. This study uses content analysis to better understand the response of spatial planning and strategic documents to climate change. We worked with a sample of towns situated in the eastern regions of the Czech Republic and employed the national classification of adaptation priority areas and related threats. Using the analysis we detected substantial differences in approaches employed in adaptation among individual towns. We also ascertained that the majority of towns studied have not yet formulated adaptation strategies and are unprepared for upcoming changes. At the same time, it is demonstrated that existing adaptation strategies have clearly supported and increased the extent of planned adaptation measures. Studied towns have focused their principal attention on water management as a key adaptation priority, and sufficient reflection has not been given to population health, agriculture, forestry and tourism. To this extent, the towns selected do not follow either national or European adaptation strategies and a rather path-dependent logic prevailed. We argue that more mobilization efforts and actions for tackling and adapting to climate change are urgently needed at the regional level so that currently isolated bottom-up and top-down approaches can be beneficially coordinated and harmonized. • Substantial differences in the approaches to climate change adaptation are visible on the local level. • The highest number of adaptation measures occurs in towns with defined adaptation strategies. • There exists an absence of adaptation planning at the regional level. • Water regime is a priority area for most towns. • Areas where the impact of climate change are indirect are not sufficiently reflected. • Municipalities do not systematically reflect the national and European adaptation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article presents a comparison of indicators based on an economy-wide material flow analysis, namely imports, exports, domestic material consumption, raw material equivalents of imports, raw material equivalents of exports and raw material consumption. These indicators were calculated for the Czech Republic for 1995–2010 using, besides an economy-wide material flow analysis, the hybrid input–output life cycle assessment method, which allows for a calculation of raw material equivalents of imports and exports. The results show that a calculation of indicators, which include raw material equivalents, is useful, as it provides some important information which is not obvious from imports, exports and domestic material consumption indicators. We have proved that the latter group of indicators provide the incorrect information regarding the environmental pressure trend related to material flows, underestimate the overall pressure related to foreign trade and provide incorrect information on the importance of various material categories in particular indicators. Consequently, in the case of the Czech Republic, the implications stemming from these points such as the very high dependency of the Czech production system on metal ores from abroad and a rather unequal distribution of environmental pressures between the Czech Republic and its trading partners have not been more thoroughly addressed by Czech economic, environmental and sustainability policies so far and present unresolved issues which will have to be dealt with in the future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We examine the intertemporal effect of environmental performance on financial performance and propose a method to assess the environmental performance in a fuller manner based on the weighting various pollutants according to their dangerousness to environment. Using our improved measures of environmental performance applied to the firm level data from the Czech Republic, the results suggest that while the effect of environmental performance on financial performance is negative for environmental performance lagged by 1year lag, it becomes positive for 2years lag. As a consequence, our findings indicate that Porter hypothesis holds in the long-run. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Negative externalities of transport are a crucial issue in environmental discussion and policy. The mobility of our society is responsible for many negative environmental impacts, both on our planet and on human health. This paper aims to assess one aspect of a negative externality of transport related to air pollution from particulate matter up to 10 μm in diameter (PM 10) and its impact on human health, using the example of the key Czech Republic highway D1. The assessment method precisely follows the geographical routing of this motorway through varying elevations in which different buffer zones are identified to assess PM 10 concentration changes according to distance from the road in the 2007–2016 period. The resulting relation between PM 10 and highway proximity is then discussed in an econometric analysis of the entire road transport network of the Czech Republic. In the final step, we assess the size and demographic structure of the population affected by the highway PM 10 pollution problem, and we compare several methods to assess economically related morbidity. The results show falling levels of PM 10 pollution, not only with increasing distance but also in intertemporal comparison, with concentrations lower by 2 μg m3 in the 2012–2016 period than in 2007–2011 despite increasing road traffic on the highway. This means a very significant reduction in the number of cases and economic value for all analyzed endpoints between EUR 485,056 and 842,891. Image 1 • PM 10 concentrations decreased in the 2007 – 2016 period despite increased road traffic. • Distance from highways is significant for both PM 10 concentration and morbidity. • Urban areas with higher population density and lower altitude are the most affected. • A total population of more than 30,000 is affected. • A PM 10 pollution decrease of 2 μg/m3 means annual health savings up to 842,891 EUR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We explore public preferences for funding of agri-environment-climatic measures. • Respondents strongly oppose national funding removal for the next period of CAP. • Water and food quality are the attributes with the highest WTP. • National funding may be informed by estimated welfare changes. • Transfer between Pillars and national funding will determine budget for AECM. In November 2017 European Union commission presented a communication report summarizing the reform proposal of the post 2020 Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The reform aims to address the environmental degradation associated with agricultural production as well as change in the structure of CAP payments. To this end, the Ministry of Agriculture in Czech Republic is preparing to set its priorities towards CAP's reform. In this study we applied a choice experiment to investigate the public preferences for a set of environmental goods and services delivered by agri-environment-climatic voluntary measures (AECMs). A mixed logit model is employed to elicit preferences and explore their heterogeneity. We find that respondents oppose strongly funding removal. Among environmental attributes, water and food quality are the ones with the highest implicit marginal willingness-to-pay values. Preferences for no funding option are heterogeneous with socio-demographic and attitudinal variables explaining some sources of this heterogeneity. A continuation of national funding for the AECMs is expected to lead to a better state of environment with an anticipated positive welfare change of 669–932 mil EUR as opposed to funding removal. The change reflects the estimated welfare change resulting from moving from a low to a medium or to a high preservation state of agri-environmental attributes. We also project the budget change for AECMs considering the level of national funding and given the transfer share between Pillar I and II. Based on our results, we suggest that national funding can be informed by the welfare change scenarios and transfer shares are projected accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]