Sustainability Indicators for the Use of Resources—The Exergy Approach

Christopher J. Koroneos, Evanthia A. Nanaki and George A. Xydis
Additional contact information
Christopher J. Koroneos: Unit of Environmental Science and Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 9 Heroon Polytechneiou Street, Zografou Campus, 15773 Athens, Greece
Evanthia A. Nanaki: University of Western Macedonia, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bakola and Sialvera, 50100 Kozani, Greece
George A. Xydis: Technical University of Denmark, Department of Electrical Engineering, Frederiksborgvej 399, P.O. Box 49, Building 776, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Sustainability, 2012, vol. 4, issue 8, 1-12

Abstract: Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reached an all-time high in 2010, rising 45% in the past 20 years. The rise of peoples’ concerns regarding environmental problems such as global warming and waste management problem has led to a movement to convert the current mass-production, mass-consumption, and mass-disposal type economic society into a sustainable society. The Rio Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, and other similar environmental milestone activities and happenings, documented the need for better and more detailed knowledge and information about environmental conditions, trends, and impacts. New thinking and research with regard to indicator frameworks, methodologies, and actual indicators are also needed. The value of the overall indicators depends on the production procedure of each material, and indicates their environmental impact. The use of “exergy indicators” based on the exergy content of materials and the use of the second law of thermodynamics in this work presents the relationship between exergy content and environmental impact.

Keywords: sustainability; exergy indicators; environmental impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/8/1867/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/8/1867/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:8:p:1867-1878:d:19563

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().