It is likely that many of us have taken advantage of weekends to take a walk in the forest or the mountain. When we return home, impressed by the beauty of the landscape, we may have reflected with sadness on the enormous damage that forest fires cause in these spaces.
We all have to be a bit more responsible and see that the forests are still an important source of resources. This is why we must try to preserve and keep them in good conditions. It should not be forgotten that fire is one of the main problems that destroys forests every Summer. This situation causes social alarm and destroys forests, which take many years to be recovered.
In Southern Europe, forest fires seriously threaten its sustainability. According to EFE VERDE, only in Spain the forest area affected by fires, between January and November 2016, has been 61,359.9 hectares. This is equivalent to more than 61,000 football pitches.
In case of involuntary fire, this situation is due not only to high temperatures reached in Summer, but also to forest biomass abandoned in the forest after logging activities. It is very important to carry out maintenance and cleaning of forests through pruning, forests’ clearing, etc.
These measures make necessary the development of new forms of exploitation for these biomass residues generated by the forestry industry (sawmills, primary transformation industries, manufacturers of processed wood products and cork and pulp manufacturers).
This is the reason why CARTIFis working on finding new technologies using biomass as a renewable energy source for the production of electrical and thermal energy as well as for the production of new bioproducts. In this way, wood yield is increased and besides, soil erosion and tree diseases are prevented. Moreover, outbreaks of forest fires are avoided.
This is the line followed by the European project LIFE EUCALYPTUS ENERGY. Its main objective is the design and construction of a demonstration plant that energetically valorises the forest biomass from the forest cuttings of Eucalyptus globulus. This wood is used mainly by the paper industry. The used biomass is mainly composed of low density biomass (leaves and branches) and it comes from timber exploitations of eucalyptus and that it is now abandoned in the forest.
The LIFE EUCALYPTUS project develops pyrolysis technology, a process by which biomass is transformed in the absence of oxygen into a combustible gas that can be exploited in an engine to obtain electric and thermal energy. In addition, in this process a solid by-product, the biochar, is obtained, which will be used in the same forest improving soil properties.
The reason for selecting eucalyptus biomass and the site where the demonstration plant is being built (Asturias, Spain) is because the selected species has a large presence in the area, around 53,000 ha. However, this experience is easily replicable to other areas and other types of biomass.
Just look at the existing wooded forest area, which in Spain is approximately 18 million hectares, 33% more than 25 years ago. Also in Spain alone, there is about 6 million tons of forest biomass in its forests. There are numbers that increase expectations of this biomass use and the benefits that will produce. We must take into account not only the added value of the generated products, but also the associated job creation. The human factor is important, due to the progressive abandonment of agricultural, herding and forestry activities that have occurred in recent years because of the rural exodus.
Therefore, keep a positive thought: biomass can generate a lot of benefits. Now, do you still think that biomass is a waste?
Currently, the 54% of world population lives im cities, and it is foreseen this figure rises by 70% in the middle of this century. Cities have been converted in denatured places in which is difficult to find interconnected nartural surroundings. Current urbanistic model presents one of the most serius global challenges by 21th Century: rapidly and changing development of industrial activities as well as the un controlled urban sprawl cause many social, environmental and health problems.
Cities are facing to environmental challenges related to poor air quality, heat island effect, increasing of flood risk, increasing of extreme phenomena frequency and intensity, the industrial areas derelict and the issues of social context (increasing of criminality, social exclusión, inequality, marginality, poverty, and urban surroundings degradation). Effects of the population concentration in cities are generally invisible for the mayority of cictizenship, however these risks remain latent and it appear in media and public opinión when it have caused seriuos problems and the environmental restoration is more difficult.
In many of the cities of the world the air quality has improved considerably in the past decades. Nonetheless, air quality is affecting to health of people and sorrounding. In Europe, the air pollution from industry has been replaced by the road traffic and heating pollution. Therefore, Air Quality is a common environmental issue in large and medium-size cities around the world.
Another consequence of climate change and population accumulation in cities is the “heat island effect”: urban areas hotter than nearly rural zones due to the urban topography and materials of building and pavements. Annual average temperature in a big city could be 1 – 3 oC higher than surroundings areas. Likewise, during nights in summer time, the variation in temperature can reach 12 oC. This effect has important consequences, but we will talk about them another time.
Regarding urban spaces management, the different kinds of abandoned and deteriorated places in cities imply an important challenge. In these areas, the environmental conflict is focussed on environmental issues like soils pollution and specific emissions, which just searches the not adaptive reuse of these spaces. This situation forgets the social side of the problem, which induces scepticism and rejection in the citizens.
All of these problems can be dealt at the same way as the nature would do it, via solutions developed for thousands of years (Nature Based Solutions, NBS). In this way, it will achieve to reconvert urban areas in places in which nature can be present again and the citizen can enjoy it.
NBS will foster the sustainable urbanism, it will retrofit degraded areas, it will develop climate change adaptation and mitigation actions and it will improve the management of climate change risks. The NBS like actions inspired in the Nature present a huge potential to be energy sustainable and to be resistant to climate changes, however their success will depend on their adaptation to local conditions.
Deployment of green corridors, carbon sinks, vegetal paths, urban farming activities, sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS), green roofs and walls, urban green filters, water spaces, pollinator’s modules, etc. in cities will be common the coming years, in order to achieve a sustainable urbanism and the re-naturing of our cities.
Food security of two-thirds of the world s’ population depends on the availability and use of fertilizers. In the transition from a fossil reserve-based to a bio-based economy, it has become a critical challenge to close nutrient cycles and move to a more effective and sustainable resource management, both from an economical and an environmental perspective.
Mineral fertilizers production require significant amounts of fossil energy. Hence, the dependency of agriculture on fossil reserve-based mineral fertilizers (especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) must be regarded as a very serious threat to future human food security. On the other hand, estimates of phosphorus reserves expect that depletion will occur within 100 to 300 year, taking into account the current trends on population growth and demand for nutrients. But impacts on the economy are expected to occur much sooner than the time of depletion, because resource scarcity will drive in advance to higher product prices.
At the same time, the agricultural demand for mineral fertilizers is continuously growing, due to a variety of factors, such as the increasing world population, the rising meat consumption, and the cultivation of energy crops. In this sense, the FAO has reported a five-fold increase in fertilizer consumption between 1960 and 2015 and this organization projects a continued increase in the coming years. The tension between offer and demand will continue pushing up the prices for nutrient resources.
Despite these circumstances, large amounts of nutrients are dispersed in the environment every day, in a controlled or uncontrolled way, through the disposal of waste streams. In addition, the intensification of animal production and the resulting manure excesses, combined with a limited availability of arable land for the disposal of waste (manure, sludge, etc.) and the excessive use of chemical mineral fertilizers, has led to surplus fertilization and nutrient accumulation in many soils worldwide. These facts have frequently caused environmental pollution.
As a consequence, it is clear that a new global effort is needed to draw a new scenario where improved nutrient use efficiency and, at the same time, reduced nutrient losses provide the bases for a greener economy to produce more food and energy while reducing environmental impact.
Four are the key points when dealing with nutrients recycling according the scientific community:
– The sustainability of our world depends fundamentally on nutrients. In order to feed 7 billion people, humans have more than doubled global land-based cycling of N and P. – The world’s N and P cycles are now out of balance, causing major environmental, health and economic problems that have received far too little attention. – Insufficient access to nutrients still limits food production and contributes to land degradation in some parts of the world, while finite P reserves represent a potential risk for future global food security, pointing to the need for their prudent use. – Unless action is taken, increases in population and per capita consumption of energy and animal products will exacerbate nutrient losses, pollution levels and land degradation, further threatening the quality of our water, air and soils, affecting climate and biodiversity.
Recycling energy and materials through re-connecting crop and livestock production becomes indispensable for attaining agricultural sustainability in all the senses, not only in the environmental sense. It is time to reconnect nutrient flows between crops production and livestock sectors. To do so, it is needed to invest in agro-industrial processes, which can contribute in the upcycling of mineral nutrients from organic flows towards mineral fertilizer. This approach calls for the further development of a third (after crop and animal production) agro-industrial pillar to be developed in addition to and support of the two existing main pillars of agricultural activity, namely agro-residue processing and upcycling.
Note: this text is part of a contribution of the author to the book “Science, Technology and Innovation for Meeting Sustainable Development Goals” to be published in 2017 by the Colorado State University.
August 8, 2016. 07:00h a.m. Radio turned on driving to work. Headlines begin. “Today is Earth Overshoot Day”, I hear. Oh. Bad news. The Earth Overshoot day in 2016 has been brought forward again.
I’m sure you are wondering about some things right now: 1) If I am able to understand the radio at that time in the morning, 2) Earth Overshoot day? What does it mean?
The answer to the first question is yes. I can understand if radio plays the summer song or the speech is about an environmental issue, in both cases my attention is activated immediately. And the answer to the second question is broader and deeper. I need to enlarge on this problem. Let’s see.
Earth Overshoot concept was originally developed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Earth Overshoot Day is defined as a mark that indicates when humanity has maxed up all the Earth’s resources for the calendar year. Although it is only an estimation, this day is considered the best scientific approach to measure the gap between natural resources generated and destroyed annually, so that, once passed, Earth is operating in overshoot and everything consumed until the end year is supported by resources that planet cannot produce and contaminants that Earth is not able to absorb (www.footprintnetwork.org)..
The simplest example to understand the concept is thinking about Earth´s resources being money in a bank. Overshoot occurs when we withdraw money from the bank faster than to wait for the interest this money generates.
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network is the organization that analyzes thousands of data points and measures humanity’s demand for supply of natural resources and ecological services every year, that is, it compares income of the Earth (which are achieved by increasing the use of renewable energy, for example) against expenses (which are produced, among others, by massive use of private cars overconsuming fuel) and the result of the equation provides the date when humanity exhausts the nature budget for that year so for the rest months, it will maintain by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating CO2 in the atmosphere, making climatic change worse.
Therefore it’s not a holiday definitively. Earth Overshoot day has moved from the end of October in 1993 to August 13th last year, which means that the deadline was shortened almost a week in 2016. Therefore each year the problem grows worse, if consumption patterns continue apace, it is hard to imagine that the day when we will have spent all the “credit” that exists in this Earth account could come. If we continue to destroy its natural capital and its ability to renew its environmental services, it will be very difficult to avoid it.
In CARTIF, our year already started with environmental purposes and to encourage companies for “funding” to Earth seems to us to be vital because we are in overcapacity nowadays. One of the most interesting ads to do this is the call Spanish CLIMA projects. The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) launches this call every year and encourages companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with the development of new low carbon activities. It is one of the best funding for those companies that need to receive the last effort to transform their activities towards low carbon technologies, since the MAGRAMA “buys” the CO2 equivalent emissions avoided (expense to Earth eluded), raising the fixed price per tonne each year.
Thus, if you choose to carry out a more environmental process, it will be attractive from the economic point of view and besides, you will contribute to add to the “money box” of the Earth, therefore activities like changing your fossil fuel boilers by other fueled by biomass, transforming your fleet to electric vehicles or using the residual heat of your process, could make an important difference for the future.
Do you dare to bring out the environmental banker in you?
We could read some time ago, as a headline in a national newspaper, that the Chairman of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, literally stated that “It is false that the electric car has zero emissions” and “(…) emissions must take into account not only CO2 emitted by the vehicle, but those produced during manufacture“. With this headline and without realizing, the Chairman of REPSOL was advocating for considering the life cycle of a product to make environmental self-declarations. The fact is that this generalized doubt about the relationship between the electric car and the CO2 cannot lead us to think that it is not one of the most environmental mobility options because it is, what happens is that we should be meticulous when it comes to talk about the environmental performance of products.
One of the first examples of using life-cycle thinking assesment (LCA) in the late 60s, in the USA, when Coca-Cola® decided to explore alternative containers besides the glass bottle through this approach. And this concept arose from a very logical way, due to the emerging companies’ demand for distributing environmental loads, nobody liked being the most pollutant. Companies began to ask about an extended responsibility in this regard and through methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), one of the most internationally recognized and accepted methods to investigate the environmental performance of products throughout their life cycle, it could be verified that the associated environmental impacts with the manufacturing stage were not the most relevant in some cases.
Let’s see an example to summarize this issue. Imagine a conversation between Mary Ecological and Mary Nosy:
Mary Ecological: “Have you seen the garlands I have placed for the party? they are made of recycled paper because I am an ecological woman, you know“ Mary Nosy: “They are lovely, where did you buy them?” Mary Ecological: “In a Chinese online shop, extremely cheap”
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) applied to these garlands would probably have confirmed us that Mary Ecological is attributing to herself a label that is not true. To buy a product in China can cause that an item made of recycled paper may have a hidden environmental price that is “disguised” using a more environmentally friendly raw material within the manufacturing process. And from the moment we are free to choose what we buy, as consumers, we are sharing the environmental responsibility with the industry, let´s keep this in mind.
When a company asks for what is the environmental profile of its product and / or process, CARTIF always advises to apply this methodology because the obtained results are a detailed environmental picture of the life cycle of its process, product or service (suppliers included), with the consequent opportunity to identify critical points and reduce costs, both environmental and economic. We have been able to check it many times in many of our projects. It doesn’t matter if we are a consumer or a product manager, to take a life-cycle approach to the environmental impact of the products we are acquiring, producing or selling, is essential to make decisions and to put in clear terms our environmental performance.
For this reason, the Chairman of Repsol said the principle of only considering the stage of use in an electric car to confirm that it does not emit CO2 is incorrect. Although it is perhaps the most significant phase (in fuel-consuming vehicles too), the assessment must be extended to its life cycle which, obviously, includes CO2 emissions from electricity production. Strictly speaking, we should either clarify that the electric vehicle does not emit CO2 during the stage of use or apply the LCA considering its life cycle (CARTIF has already done it) so that, based on the results, to generate environmental headlines.
We love the environmental assessments well done and undertaking rigorous environmental claims. Ask us and we’ll tell you how to do this!
In the first part of this post, we talked about the conclusions we heard in an interesting conference about air quality. After that, we decided two to do two things. On the one hand, to share the figures and conclusions there exposed and on the other hand, to work at self-examination, thinking about our behavior as citizens. What happens when someone asks us if we are willing to use public transport more often? Or to organize ourselves to reduce the number of our daily trips using the private car? We broached the subject of our rights:
• We have a right tobuy wherever we want. We love e-commerce. We are able to buy Chinese oranges on the internet and to ask for bringing them to our home. And if we were not there when company arrives, we are asking for returning another time. To exercise this right involves the use of vans to our home with very low occupancy rates. And not visit the neighborhood greengrocer, of course!
• We have a right to have the car we want, with a good engine and diesel (don’t forget it is cheaper), even for an urban use such as shopping or bringing children to school
• We have a right tomove anywhere within the urban public space. We intend to arrive to the center of our city driving and to find available parkings there. It is better than largest urban parks.
• We have a right to choose where to live and normally, we prefer the suburbs, with good quality of life (and good air). Moreover, we are moving with our private car whenever necessary, regardless of the reason. And of course, being the only occupant of our vehicle.
• We have a right to have public transport, anywhere and at any time, although sometimes the transports are running practically empty at certain periods.
• We have a right not to meet delivery vans in the middle of the street and we agree on the fact that Authorities restrict the time in which they are able to circulate through the city center. This means that companies have to increase their fleet with vans with poorer quality in order to have more available units and, consequently, to ensure orders. Including our oranges.
• We have a right to have dumpsters on our doorstep, with frequent domestic rubbish collection. If we do not check that truck passes several times a day, we are complaining.
• We have a right to review our vehicles periodically, but we order to companies which carry out the compulsory vehicle tests not take too long in the review and not to be expensive. Implementing appropriate control systems for detecting “big high-polluting cars” would require longer reviews and a higher price.
We are sure that you have ever used these rights to defend your comfort zone but, in CARTIF, we are convinced too that, with a little effort, we could change our habits by more sustainably customs. We know that awareness always takes time, but the same situation happened when the waste separation was legislated or when smoking in public places was banned, and both or them are now fully integrated into our daily practices.
For this reason, we are asking the authorities to let experts advise them both for implementing more measures to encourage sustainable behaviors and to penalize those which are damaging in excess. That is, we should support to have a little less of “individual freedom” in order to have a better air quality.
Because with the use of “our rights” what we are really doing is limiting the freedom of others. The elderly, children or people with respiratory diseases are risk groups and their health largely depends on the quality of the air they breathe.
Miguel de Cervantes wrote in his work Don Quixote: “Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured (…) “.
