Service Sector Metabolism: Accounting for Energy Impacts of the Montjuic Urban Park in Barcelona

Jordi Oliver‐Solà, Montserrat Núñez, Xavier Gabarrell, Martí Boada and Joan Rieradevall

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2007, vol. 11, issue 2, 83-98

Abstract: This article evaluates, from an industrial ecology (IE) perspective, the energy performance of the services inside an urban system and determines their global environmental impact. Additionally, this study determines which are the most energy demanding services and the efficiency of their energy use per visitor and per surface area unit. The urban system under study is the Montjuïc urban park in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, which can be considered a services system. In this case study we distinguished the different patterns of consumption among the service fields and, by studying each field individually, found the most efficient facilities and identified the most critical services based on energy use per visitor or per square meter. These findings are based on the use of energy flow accounting (EFA), life‐cycle assessment (LCA), and the energy footprint to analyze the Park's technical energy consumption. Electricity consumption represents nearly 70% of the total energy consumed by the services at Montjuïc Park. The forest surface area required to absorb the CO2‐equivalent emissions produced by the life cycle of the energy consumed at Montjuïc Park represents 12.2 times the Park's surface area. We conclude this article by proposing the incorporation of the methods of IE within the study of parks containing multiple services to improve energy management, and as a result, to raise the global environmental performance of the service sector.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1162/jie.2007.1193

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:inecol:v:11:y:2007:i:2:p:83-98

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1088-1980

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Industrial Ecology is currently edited by Reid Lifset

More articles in Journal of Industrial Ecology from Yale University
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().