 
Sustainability and Engineering

Aran Eales & Mike Clifford

Copyright © University of Nottingham, 2013

Published at Smashwords

The University Of Nottingham,

University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk

First published: January 2013

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This eBook has been put together using material generated by The University Of Nottingham, in combination with material from third-party 'Creative Commons' sources. The principle of sustainability has been upheld through the production of this eBook through the re-use of the openly licensed material. This resource is in turn being made openly available for anyone with an interest in learning. We would like to thank all of the individuals and organisations whose Creative Commons resources are included, or have been adapted, as part of this publication.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Module Outline

Chapter 2: Energy

Chapter 3: Materials

Chapter 4: Water

Chapter 5: Food and Agriculture

Chapter 6: Buildings

Chapter 7: Social Dimensions of Sustainability and Engineering

Chapter 8: Economics

Chapter 9: Moving Forward

Chapter 1: Module Outline

This module is intended to give you a broad understanding of issues related to environmental sustainability in the context of engineering. The environmental problems facing our world are becoming more apparent day by day, and the term "sustainability" is used more frequently in the media. This module will explore the concept of sustainability and discuss some of the issues surrounding the subject.

Each chapter will begin with an overview of the content, and will then introduce key factors and the current world systems in place for the subject matter such as energy, materials, food, water and shelter. The social and economic factors of sustainability in an engineering context will also be covered. The problems associated with these systems will then be highlighted, specifically their environmental or social impacts and what part of the systems that could be considered unsustainable. Alternatives will then be introduced and outlined including what options there are and what are the challenges involved in implementing them.

Scope of Module

The issues around sustainability are enormous, and it is not the role or scope of this module to cover everything in great depth, as there is enough information on any single subject for a masters or Ph.D. The aim of this module instead is to introduce the key concepts of hazards facing the global community in the coming years, how we got to our current state and ideas for what can be done to modify the current trajectory.

Teaching Method

The module is self taught through online resources. You will be expected to work through the content at your own pace. There will be several resources included in the body of the module such as links to websites, podcasts or videos online, which you can browse as necessary. As mentioned, the module is intended to introduce certain concepts around sustainability and instigate interest for you to conduct personal research in topics of interest.

Assessment

The assessment will be an essay or presentation for which you must research a topic of your choice related to the module content. The essay will become part of the learning resources for this module – essays and presentations will be published on line for use by people doing the module in the future. There will be more information about the assessment towards the end of the module – but bear it in mind as you are going through the chapters – make a note if anything specifically interests you or you feel you would want to research more about a particular topic.

# Introduction

"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors - we borrow it from our children"

(Anon)

Rapid expansion of population, resource consumption and associated pollution by the human race has put a strain on the natural ecosystems of the Earth we rely upon to survive. The limits to our expansion are beginning to show, as significant issues such as resource depletion, climate change, scarcity of water, soil fertility depletion and changes in biodiversity occur.

A term "sustainable development" has emerged and is being used increasingly by the media to describe a need for constructing a way of organising ourselves that doesn't detrimentally harm the planet or society. This chapter aims to explore the term "sustainability" and put it into context with engineering, a profession that has contributed to the current problematic system as much as providing a platform for creating solutions to the problems.

Definitions of sustainability will be given, followed by an introduction to ethical issues behind the topic. The concept of exponential growth will then be explored in detail and applied to global patterns of growth and consumption. Finally the limits to this growth will be outlined, before discussing the role of an engineer in the sustainability agenda.

Figure 1: Sustainable Development is based around 3 core considerations; economic, social and environmental (or ecological – see 1.2)

Figure 1 sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.  
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=405678&section=4

## A definition of Sustainability

The word "sustain" when used as an action or a process is associated with concepts such as "to carry on" or to "keep going". For example you sustain your body by giving it sufficient nutrients, food and water. However you could keep your body going on stimulants and unhealthy food which would prolong survival, but with a poor standard of living and probably not for very long. Thus it could be called an unsustainable health program.

Similarly environmental sustainability embodies this concept of endurance applied to the Earth's natural systems and our relationship with them as a human race. It is a concept of organising ourselves with a long term view of the future; aiming for a system that will sustain us and the world and not cause significant catastrophe to either.

The most common definition of sustainability comes from the 1987 Bruntland report and is as follows:

"Meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs" (Bruntland Report, 1987)

Several other definitions of sustainability have since been suggested, which include:

"Sustainable means using methods, systems and materials that won't deplete resources or harm natural cycles" (Rosenbaum, 1993).

Sustainability "identifies a concept and attitude in development that looks at a site's natural land, water, and energy resources as integral aspects of the development" (Vieira,1993)

"Sustainability integrates natural systems with human patterns and celebrates continuity, uniqueness and placemaking" (Early, 1993)

"Sustainable developments are those which fulfil present and future needs (WECD, 1987) while [only] using and not harming renewable resources and unique human-environmental systems of a site: [air], water, land, energy, and human ecology and/or those of other [off-site] sustainable systems (Rosenbaum 1993 and Vieria 1993)."

Definitions Source: [see reference 2]

Above text sourced from Wikispaces under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence.  
http://meangreenwikimachine.wikispaces.com/Sustainability

Key words and themes from these definitions are as follows:

Needs – humans have basic needs for survival

Resources – the world provides resources for these needs

Natural cycles/systems/balance – planet earth is a self-sustaining system without humans, we affect these systems when we use resources for our needs

Continuity – finding ways of meeting our needs through using nature's resources without affecting the natural cycles in a way that will detriment future survival

Now watch this 15 minute doculecture from the University of Idaho about the definitions of sustainability: http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch02/ch02-p01.asp

Activity

What does sustainability mean to you? Write down key words you associate with the word "sustainability". From these words then draw up a definition of sustainability.

## Ethics of Sustainability

Motivations for exploring sustainability can be different depending on your world view: logic, emotion or instinct can be the drivers. Generally they are based around concepts of humanity inherently striving for survival. The following are three viewpoints for sustainability:

The Ecologist Doesn't see the human race as a separate entity from the planet and its resources, but part of it. Their motivations for preserving the planet are that nature and humanity have an inherent value and should be protected because of that.

The Environmentalist Sees nature or the planet as separate from the human race. It is there for humans, and as such humans should have stewardship over the world. They see the planet as something to be preserved so that humans can survive and evolve.

The Economist Understands the measures of unsustainability arising from a consumer led culture treating finite resources as an income, but has faith that market forces and a "business as usual" approach will result in a natural crisis aversion occurring; that the system will sort itself out through technological advances if left to its own devices.

It is not intended to go deeply into philosophy in this module, but it is important to consider for yourself what motivations you may have, (if any) on this subject. To assess motivations you first need to place yourself with or in the world, and this is a subjective experience.

Engineers have a role in society to design and implement systems that benefit humanity. Before an engineer can undertake a project, they must first have a full grasp of their motivations for being an engineer, and whether the aims and objectives of the project fit in with their ethical standpoint.

Activity

Imagine you work for a civil engineering company and your company has been asked to build a road through ancient woodland. The construction of the road will destroy the habitat of an endangered snail. Opponents to the road say that ancient woodland has an inherent value, and it is a travesty to wipe out the only place this snail lives in the world. Supporters of the road argue that it will bring social and economic benefits to the village it is connecting, which is inhabited by many people living in poverty. They argue that the economic benefits of the road will increase the quality of life for the residents of the village. The company you work for stand to make a large profit by securing the contract to build the road.

What would be the primary concerns for an ecological engineer, an environmental engineer and an economical engineer?

Would anything change if it was panda rather than a snail that was endangered?

Worldwide trends will now be presented to illuminate the concepts of why people are talking about sustainability. These come under two themes: exponential growth of population and consumption (the needs as expressed above) and associated limits to growth due to depleted resources and increasing pollution resulting from the consumption of the resources.

## Exponential Growth

Figure 1.3.1 adapted and sourced from Wikipedia (Author: McSush) under a the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication License   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Exponential.svg

The above graph shows three different functions increasing over time. The y axis is the amount of something; the x axis is increasing time. The red graph increases proportionally, the blue increases cubically, and the green graph increases exponentially. In this example the exponential graph doubles over a set period of time but it could triple, quadruple or increase by any factor of x over time.

The green graph is the important one as it is this model that many world systems such as population growth and resource consumptions follow. The shape of that graph and the concepts it introduces are essential to understanding the trajectory of patterns in society.

Example: A bacteria is introduced to a lake of a finite size. The bacteria cover a set area of the surface of the lake, and this area doubles in size every hour. After 1 hour the bacteria covers 1% of the lake. How many hours will it take to cover the whole lake?

It takes 6 hours for the bacteria to cover just under one third of the lake (32%), but in the next hour and a half, it covers the whole of the lake. This example is intended to demonstrate the nature of exponential growth – amounts become very large very quickly.

It could be considered that we are now in that final hour, where the amount of water left on the lake is our remaining resources. If it is known that the world is strained with our presence currently, those strains will double in a short period of time, and double again after that unless radical changes are made.

## World Population and Associated Impacts

Real life situations follow the pattern of exponential growth. The most familiar of these is the world population graph, which you have probably seen before:

Figure 1.4.1 World Population since AD 1000

Figure 1.4.1 sourced from Slideshare.net (Author: Toni Menninger) under a creative commons attribution-non commercial license   
http://www.slideshare.net/amenning/growth-in-a-finite-world-sustainability-and-the-exponential-function

Global population has just reached 7 billion people. 100 years ago there were about 1.6 billion people in the world and in the 1960's there were about half the people there are today. In the last 50 years the population has doubled, and this trend shows no signs of changing. Each person on the world requires resources to survive so naturally there will follow exponential graphs for world resource use over the same time period.

Although a bigger population generally means more mouths to feed, there is not an even distribution of consumption patterns throughout the world. One of the biggest indicators of unsustainability is in the misdistribution of wealth. Over a third of the world still live in poverty with limited access to energy, water or food.

In 2006, a team of scholars with the United Nations University's World Institute for Development Economics Research  published the first paper to tally, for the entire world, all the major elements of household wealth, everything from financial assets and debts to land, homes, and other tangible property.

This research, based on year 2000 data, found that the richest 1 percent of the world's adult population, individuals worth at least $514,512, owned 39.9 percent of the world's household wealth, a total greater than the wealth of the world's poorest 95 percent, those adults worth under $150,145 who hold, together, just 29.4 percent of the world's wealth. [see reference 5]

Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest two per cent of adults own more than 50 per cent of the world's assets while the poorest half hold only 1 per cent of wealth [see reference 5]. The USA consumes 25% of the world's energy with a share of the world population of 4.5% [see reference 6]. The figures for material, water and food consumption between the richest nations and the poorest display a similar level of disparity.

Population growth is much higher in developing countries, while resource consumption and pollution is higher in developed countries. The gap between the ends of the spectrum has been increasing in a similar exponential fashion.

The focus of sustainability is as much on humanity (the social corner of the sustainability triangle) as it is on nature (the ecological), and to reduce this inequality and provide a basic standard of living conditions for the earth's inhabitants is paramount to the sustainability challenge.

## Global Trends over Time in Food, Water and Energy and Economics

Figure 1.5.2 Global water use by sector

Figure 1.5.2 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute.  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Water demonstrates a similar pattern to food, but note the difference in time scales. Natural water systems are under pressure from overuse, pollution and impacts of climate change. Water supply will be covered in Chapter 4 in more detail; careful consideration must be given to this precious resource on which all life depends.

Figure 1.5.3 Global Energy Consumption since 1850

Figure 1.5.3 sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399545&section=1

Energy will be covered in the next chapter, but note the start of the curve is around the time of the industrial revolution, when the stream engine was invented and fossil fuels became the main source of industrial energy. Energy use is linked to economic development, and in the current context, pollution and resource depletion: two key factors of unsustainability.

Figure 1.5.4 World GDP 1 AD -2000

(Source: visualising economics.com [see reference 10])

Figure 1.5.4 sourced from Visualizing Economics under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License  
http://visualizingeconomics.com/cool-data/

The graph above shows the exponential increase in gross domestic product of the world, which is effectively a measure of wealth. Economic growth has been the central driving factor for the advancement of humanity and the negative environmental and social consequences or "externalities" that have resulted from it. It is a challenging subject to comprehend fully, but economics and its relevance and importance in an engineer's role in understanding sustainability will be delved into in chapter 8.

## Biophysical Limits

In 1972 the book "Limits to Growth" was published [see reference 12] which made an assessment of humanity's impact on the world, followed this with predictions of future trends based on at the time current consumption patterns, and calculated what levels we could approach without causing irreversible implications by crossing them.

The following are categories of the limits, otherwise known as planetary boundaries:

  * Assimilative capacity of the atmosphere to hold Carbon Dioxide

  * Loss of biodiversity

  * Human interference with nitrogen/phosphorous cycles

  * stratospheric ozone depletion

  * Ocean acidification

  * Global scarcity of fresh water

  * Adverse changes in land use

  * Chemical pollution

  * Atmospheric aerosol loading

Figure 1.6.2 Graphical Representation of the planetary boundaries, and current situation

(Source: Stockholme resilience [see reference 14])

Figure 1.6.2 sourced from Stockholm Resilience (Stockholm University) with permission  
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/researchnews/tippingtowardstheunknown/quantitativeevolutionofboundaries.4.7cf9c5aa121e17bab42800043444.html

Figure 1.6.2 graphically represents the 9 planetary boundaries. The green areas are the estimated safe limits within these boundaries, and the red areas are our current measured levels within the boundaries. Limits to the graph are that some of the boundaries have no data, and it does not show at what rate these levels have changed over time. The graph shows that in some case (such as loss of biodiversity and CO2 emissions) we have already crossed the boundaries. In other cases there is still room for growth, but levels are increasing rapidly as explained earlier.

Many of these biophysical limits to growth can be observed as measures of unsustainability rather than a lack of sustainability. There is an important difference: when attempting to address these problems, if we only seek to find "quick fixes" to avoid the effects of unsustainability then it is likely that the problems will reoccur in the future a different form. A key concept is to look at the roots of unsustainability and implement a paradigm shift to create systems with a holistic view of our relationship with the earth and to each other that will see us not just surviving but flourishing into the future.

The underlying theme to take from these graphs is that exponential growth on a finite planet will eventually fail – the world cannot support us if we continue at the current trajectory.

Figure 1.6.3 Timeframes and Possible Future Scenarios

Figure 1.6.3 sourced from MIT Open Courseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm

## The engineer's Role in Sustainability

"Engineering: The art of directing the great sources of power and Nature to the use and benefit of Man." -Thomas Tredgold, 1818 [see reference 16]

Engineering is defined as the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes. (dictionary.com)

Development can be called the sum of our products and projects, i.e. our application of technology. In these applications engineers carry out, influence or decide the options evaluated, the decision-making criteria, the decision and the detailed design and implementation/production.

For development to become 'sustainable', engineers must incorporate 'sustainability' into all our planning and engineering of products and projects. Technology is neither good nor bad in itself - how we choose to apply it determines whether a good balance is achieved.

Engineering integrates with all aspects of society; it takes concepts from maths and sciences and puts them into context through social and economic considerations before implementing them as tangible outcomes in society. It is essential that engineering understands social and environmental constraints and does not just conform to economic necessities. The purely business influence has been the paradigm norm of engineering, which has led to the problems outlined above.

Bill Kelly describes how social responsibility is key to an engineer's role:

"Social responsibility is not a new issue for the engineering profession. It is fundamental to defining engineering as a profession. Following the concept that the outward part of an engineer's social responsibility is affecting public policy, the engineering profession is challenged today to help define social responsibly as part of defining the principles and practices of sustainable development." [See reference 17]

Above text sourced from cnx.org (Author: Bill Kelly) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 United States  
http://cnx.org/content/m19062/latest/

This module will consider an engineer's role in society and how that relates to aspects of sustainability. An engineer has a duty to implement their knowledge of how the world works to design systems, processes and technology that will benefit humanity. As explained in this chapter, humanity faces grave challenges in survival, and as such a knowledge of these challenges and a willingness to solve them these must be reflected in an engineer's duty to society.

In making the world sustainable a key concept is design; we need to design how society, the economy and the environment can all function as one holistically and symbiotically, without one detrimentally affecting the other. A fundamental part of engineering is design and as such it will be engineers, integrated and embedded in society that can use their skills to steer humanity away from collapse to a bright and optimistic future.

Follow this slide show from Cambridge University which is entitled "What do engineers need to know about sustainable development?"

http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=IntroToESD&page=slideshow

The Engineering Council in the UK has produces a guidance on sustainability, which defines 6 principles that engineers should adhere to:

  * Contribute to building a sustainable society, present and future

  * Apply professional and responsible judgement and take a leadership role

  * Do more than just comply with legislation and codes

  * Use resources efficiently and effectively

  * Seek multiple views to solve sustainability challenges

## Summary

This chapter has outlined a broad perspective of what sustainability is and how and why personal ethics are paramount to confront before confronting the challenge of sustainability. We have discussed exponential growth, its implications for world population and resource consumption, what the bio-physical limits to growth on the planet are, and why and how the engineering profession has a role to play in the sustainability arena.

In the following chapters we will look in more depth at specific areas outlined above – areas that have experienced exponential growth, and are putting ecological pressures on the earth towards the planetary boundaries outlined.

## Further Reading

Online Teaching Materials

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Introduction to Sustainability http://ocw.njit.edu/nce/eps/eps-622-cohen/index.php

Sustainability Metrics http://ocw.njit.edu/files/eps622/eps622_lecture03.mp4

Delft University of Technology

Sustainable Development for engineers, Lecture 1: Introduction

http://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/sustainable-development/sustainable-development-for-engineers/lectures/lecture-1-introduction/

University of Idaho

Principles of Sustainability

Doculecture: Sustainable Development http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch02/ch02-p03.asp

Web Resources

Wikipedia Sustainability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

YouTube Animation on Sustainability http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NiTN0chj0

Towards Sustainability http://www.towards-sustainability.co.uk/

Global Education Project:

http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/aboutwallchart.php

United nations Population statistics: http://www.un.org/esa/population/

UK Engineering Council Guidance on Sustainability http://www.engc.org.uk/about-us/sustainability

Books

Sustainability by Design: a subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture, John R. Ehrenfeld, 2008, Yale University Press

The Principals of Sustainability, Simon Dresner, 2008, Earthscan, London

Positive Development: from vicious circles to virtuous cycles through built environment design, Janis Birkeland, 2008, Earthscan, London

The Sustainability Revolution: portrait of a paradigm shift, Andres R Edwards, 2005, New Society Publishers.

##  References

1.http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=405678&section=4Accessed on: 3rd Feb 2012

2. http://meangreenwikimachine.wikispaces.com/Sustainability Accessed on: 23rd Feb 2012

3. Lunkwill , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Exponential.svg Accessed on: 4th Feb 2012, licence: CC SA BY

4. http://www.slideshare.net/amenning/growth-in-a-finite-world-sustainability-and-the-exponential-function Accessed on: 23rd March 201

6. CHILLYMANJARO, http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/10/13/feeding-the-world-solutions-for-a-cultivated-planet/Accessed on: 4th Feb 2012, licence: CC BY SA

7. Houghton, John (1997) "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing" Cambridge University Press, p.117 Available online: http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow#ref accessed 5th May 2012

8. http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399545&section=1 Accessed on: 4th Feb 2012

9. http://visualizingeconomics.com/cool-data/Accessed on: 4th Feb 2012

10. Limits to growth: the 30-year update, Donella H. Meadows et al., Routledge; Revised edition edition (1 Nov 2004), ISBN-10: 1844071448

11. The Limits to Growth first edition, Donella H. Meadows et al., Universe Books, 1972 ISBN 0-87663-165-0

12. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/science-technology-and-society/sts-003-the-rise-of-modern-science-fall-2010/Accessed on: 21st Feb 2012

13.http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/researchnews/tippingtowardstheunknown/quantitativeevolutionofboundaries.4.7cf9c5aa121e17bab42800043444.html Accessed on: 23rd Feb 2012

14. Design for Sustainability, Lecture 1: Global Challenges, Jerome Connor et al. http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm Accessed on: 21st Feb 2012

15. http://engineering.mit.edu/live/news/660-engineering-the-art-of-directing-the-great-sources Accessed on: 21st Feb 2012

16. Sustainability in Engineering Education and Ethics , Bill Kelly , the Creative Commons Attribution License http://cnx.org/content/m19062/latest/ Accessed on: 29th Feb 2012
Chapter 2: Energy

We use energy for everything we do, whether it is in industry, agriculture, transport, or the domestic setting. Since the industrial revolution, the majority of this energy has come from a dense, energy rich resource known collectively as fossil fuels. The impacts of the use of fossil fuels are becoming more recognised, in the form of resource depletion and pollution caused from burning these fuels. This chapter will firstly give an introduction to energy; how to measure it and what forms there are. It will then outline worldwide energy use – what we use energy for and where we get this energy from. The effects of this consumption pattern will be highlighted, before presenting a sustainable energy strategy which includes reducing energy, using it more efficiently and introducing renewable energy technologies.

## Energy Definitions

What is Energy?

The scientific definition of energy is the capacity to do work. Energy is transferred from one form to another through a process, and during this process we get the outcome of useful work being done. Examples of energy processes are burning wood in a stove to keep a house warm, combustion of petrol to move a vehicle and converting the energy from food into helping us function in our daily lives.

How do we measure it? – Power and Energy

We need to introduce some scientific terms so we can refer to quantities of energy simply. The main point here is to understand the difference between Power and Energy. Energy as mentioned above is the capacity to do work, whereas power is the rate of doing work.

Energy (the capacity to do work) is measured in Joules (J) or Watt-hours (Wh)

Power (rate of using or producing energy) is measured in Watt (W) or kilowatts (kW)

Energy = Power x Time or Power = Energy / time

A Note on Units

There are several different ways of quantifying energy; barrels of oil equivalent, British Thermal Units (for heat) or Calories to name a few. Watts and Watt-hours are generally used as a standard way of comparing amounts of energy.

Power and Energy Examples:

Power density

This is the amount of power per unit area and it is measured in kW/m2.

Example:

Solar radiation represents the power density coming from the sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation (energy) that falls on a surface. During summer months at noon, on a clear day, power density values from as much as 900W/m2 to 1000 W/m2 can be measured. [See reference 3]

Energy density

This is the amount of energy stored in a given region or space per unit volume or mass.

Example:

The energy of a barrel of oil (158.9 litres) is 4392 kWh. Its energy density is therefore

27640 kWh/m3. [See reference 3]

Conversion efficiency

The second law of thermodynamics states that when energy is converted from one form to another some of this energy will be lost. Another way of stating this is that in any energy process entropy (or disorder) is increased, which means that it is impossible to have a completely 100% efficient process. Even if all of the energy in a closed system is converted from one form of energy into another, the useful energy is less than the total. Energy which is not useful may take the form of heat loss, or may result in sound waves etc. The measure of how much energy you put in to how much come out is known as the conversion efficiency.

Example:

A thermal power station is able to extract 1691kWh of electrical energy from a barrel of

Petroleum (which contains 4392kWh of energy). The station's conversion efficiency is

38.5%. [see reference 3]

Example:

Commercial photovoltaic modules can reach efficiencies of 18%, i.e. if the incident

radiation is 1000 W/m2 it will produce 180 W/m2. [see reference 3]

## World Energy Use

From the early 18th century global energy use experienced an exponential growth as represented in the graph below (shown from 1850). A major contributor to this trend was the invention of the steam engine, which heralded a new era of the use of fossil fuels such as coal. Towards the end of the 20th century the exponential nature of energy use tails off to a more linear growth, with a hint of flattening out towards the year 2000. Efforts to explain this change in trajectory based around theories of resource depletion will be included later in the chapter.

Figure 2.2.1 Global primary Energy use since 1850

Figure 2.2.1 sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399545&section=1

Figure 2.2.2 Global energy consumption by fuel type since 1980. Note the figures are in watts – this is because it is showing the average energy used over that year. This is the same for the following charts

Figure 2.2.2 adapted for the purpose of this eBook and sourced from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook (2011)"  
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html

The figure below shows that in 2006 80.9% of the worlds primary energy comes from fossil fuels – Coal, Gas and Oil.

Figure 2.2.3 Energy production worldwide in 2008

Figure 2.2.3 sourced from Climate Lab under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) license[  
http://climatelab.org/Coal_Power](http://climatelab.org/Coal_Power)

Figure 2.2.4: What we use the energy for

Figure 2.2.4 sourced from Slideshare.net (Author: Skeen) under a Creative Commons Attribution- 3.0 license  
http://www.slideshare.net/skeen/game-plan-v10-1

This chart shows what we use worldwide energy for, with agriculture, Industry, transport and domestic the biggest sectors. The forestry sector figures are of interest, as not only does the cutting down of trees use a large amount of energy, but the trees lost as a result increase the effects of climate change, as they are natural carbon sinks. Climate change and its implications for the future of the biosphere will be discussed in more depth later in this chapter.

Figure 2.2.5: Energy Use by Region 2008

Figure 2.2.5 sourced from Slideshare.net (Author: Skeen) under a Creative Commons Attribution- 3.0 license  
http://www.slideshare.net/skeen/game-plan-v10-1

The difference in the levels of consumption between the poorest countries (around 80kWh per capita per year) and that of richer countries (around 8,000kWh per capita per year) reaches two orders of magnitude. Richer countries have been consuming electricity for many decades at a rate much higher than the growth rate of their populations and even of their economies. Another important fact to consider is that much of the energy consumed in Asia (especially China) is used for producing goods that are consumed in the more economically developed countries. If this was taken into account the energy demographics would be even more out of proportion.

The figures above serve to demonstrate the current world energy use. The main points to take from the graphs are:

The majority of our energy currently comes from fossil fuels. As mentioned, these fuels are incredibly energy dense, and this has enabled us to progress in terms of technology and infrastructure at a rate never before possible. The problems with becoming reliant on fossil fuels will be explained in the next section.

The energy use is not evenly distributed throughout the world. As with other issues surrounding sustainability, inequality is an important issue. More economically developed countries (MEDCs) consume the majority of the world's energy.

As will be demonstrated, even if alternative forms of energy are taken into consideration and brought on line in a big way, there will still be a gap between the amount of energy we need and the energy that is available without fossil fuels. The challenge is to reduce our consumption of energy, which is no easy task when viewing the trends outlined in figure 2.2.1 – a steady increase of consumption over the last 150 years.

Activity

Think about the electrical energy you use in an average day. Make a table and for each activity make a note of the power used (e.g. your laptop uses 50W – this should be written on the back of it, an energy saving light bulb uses 12W) and multiply this by the number of hours you use it for which will give you total energy for each activity. Add up the energy column to find your total electrical energy consumption for a day.

Find out the conversion for kWh to tonnes of carbon and calculate your carbon footprint per year.

This is just electrical energy. Make a list of other forms of energy you use daily and research/estimate carbon emitted for these activities.

How would this differ to somebody living in a less economically developed country? How could you reduce your consumption?

For one activity (driving a car, watching TV, producing a plastic bag, turning on central heating) draw a flow diagram of where the energy comes from. An example for switching on a light is below:

Switch on a light: trace the energy flow back through the national grid as electricity to the generator, round the turbine as angular momentum, back through the pipe as steam, back into the furnace as burning coal, back through the coal train to the Russian coal mine back deep down into the earth's crust and reverse a million years to a dinosaur, through the digestive system to a prehistoric plant life then right back to the beginning as a UV ray travelling from the sun. (It carries on but we'll stop there).

What could you do to reduce your energy consumption?

There are online carbon footprint calculators that guide you through the steps of energy use in your life:

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

## Problems with Fossil Fuel Use: Resource Depletion

Fossil fuels are a form of solar energy, stored in biomass which has compacted in the earth's crust over billions of years, which is the reason they are so energy dense. There is a finite amount of fossil fuels left in the earth's sub-surface. A steady consumption of a finite resource will have a certain and inevitable conclusion: the reserves will eventually run out. An exponential consumption of a finite resource will have the same effect, only much quicker. The debate on resource depletion is not then if, but when the resource will run out.

Peak oil

Hubbert was a US geophysicist who worked for the oil industry in the USA during the 1950s. He postulated that the amount of oil being discovered was reducing, and made a prediction that oil production for the US would slow, "peak" and then drop off, following a bell shaped curve graph as follows:

Figure 2.3.1 – Hubbert's curve. The dotted red line shows when the prediction was made

Figure 2.3.1 sourced from Wikipedia (Author: Sfoucher) under a  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic License  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_US_high.svg

Below is Hubbert's original prediction for worldwide oil supply. He approximated world oil supplies would peak "about half a century" after the report was written (1956).

Figure 2.3.2 Worldwide peak oil predicted by Hubbert

Figure 2.3.2 sourced from Wikipedia (Author: Hankwang) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic License  
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kgrr/Sandbox/Peak_oil

Another important point to consider is world consumption. When consumption exceeds production there is a shortfall between supply and demand. At this point prices in oil go up, and there are concerns about where to secure oil from.

We have already established that our current energy demands are reliant on oil and other fossil fuels. Once peak oil is reached, as well as a rise in price, energy security will become an issue. As with other valuable resources, oil has the potential to cause international conflict.

Hubbert's peak has been used specifically for oil, but all production of fossil fuels and other mined minerals of which there is a finite supply follow a similar curve, leading to peak gas, peak coal, peak uranium, peak copper etc.

Some reports estimate around 40 years of petroleum supply remaining. Natural gas supply is expected to last only a little longer at around sixty years; coal is much more abundant and expected to last just over 200 years; however, it is one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated.

As fossil fuels become harder to obtain, the energy required to mine them becomes greater. This is known as the energy return on investment (EROI): how much energy you need to put in to how much you get out. In the early days of oil discovery this was very high, as oil was easy to find and didn't require much energy to extract. Now the return is much lower, more energy is put in to get lower amounts out in a reducing spiral.

The real problem with fossil fuels is that they form an economic scenario based on highly fluctuating prices, that their availability is unequally distributed (just as much between North and South as between rich and poor) and that they have a demonstrated harmful impact on the ecosystem.

The subject of peak oil and the implications of our reliance on a substance that will one day run out has sparked heated debate in the last few years, especially as the price of oil has been steadily rising.

Now watch this TED talk covering in detail society's addiction to oil, and strategies to overcome this addiction by transitioning society to a sustainable energy system.

Rob Hopkins Transition Towns

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rob_hopkins_transition_to_a_world_without_oil.html

## Problems with Fossil Fuel Usage: Climate Change

The burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (C02) traps the heat from the sun and causes global temperatures to rise, known as the "greenhouse effect". These rising temperatures affect the earth's ecosystems and biodiversity, the results of which are ever more present in the media – sea levels rising, droughts, and extreme weather.

As with resource depletion there is a debate to the scale and timeframe of the problem. In this case the questions are about a) the amount of C02 in the atmosphere currently and b) what effect this is having on our climate. Some argue that the sun is causing the earth to heat up and C02 levels are increasing as a result. The reason for this debate is that climate science is an extremely complicated field, and with so many contributing factors it is impossible to get exact links between all the parameters to prove exactly what is going on.

One additional issue is the concept of positive feedback loops – an example of this is the warming of the atmosphere causes Arctic tundra to melt which contains methane, releasing further greenhouse gases which add to the warming of the atmosphere.

Another is as the Arctic melts there is less ice to reflect the suns heat away from the earth, again adding to the warming in a positive loop. These problems introduce the concept of a "point of no return" a level of greenhouse gases which if we meet we will have no way of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The following web resource about climate change explains the problems very concisely

http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=ClimateChange&page=slideshow

## Sustainable Energy Production – Reduction and Efficiency

In order to satisfy the basic needs of all of mankind sustainably, a transformation and increase of energy services is required; one quarter of the world's population currently uses three quarters of available commercial energy resources; resources that are being rapidly depleted and that are facing exhaustion. The means of improving this situation begin by increasing energy efficiency (alongside promoting using less energy, or conservation), by diversifying energy sources and by moving to the use of renewable energies.

Reduce

The first steps to a sustainable energy system solution is essential and involves reducing the amount of energy we consume. This is an often overlooked concept, as it involves changing the current paradigm of steady economic growth, which is generally associated with increased energy consumption. The economic factor of constant growth will be explored in a later chapter, but in this section it must be highlighted that without fossil fuels, we will not be able to continue our current energy consumption, and these patterns of use must change.

Efficiency

Much of the energy we use in burning fossil fuels is wasted. In any energy transfer there are associated losses, usually in the form of wasted heat going to the atmosphere. Using the example from earlier a thermal power plant is 38.5% efficient, transporting it from the power station to you houses looses another 7%, then once it is in your home further energy will be lost through inefficient appliances. Considering all these losses, and the precious value of the resource in the first place, it does seem absurd that the final end use is a light being left on when nobody is in the room or an empty room being kept warm.

In transport use, cars can be made to be more efficient therefore using less fuel. However, there is a danger when considering efficiency without first consulting the first ethos of reduction. An increased efficiency coupled with an increased usage could have zero net effect of increased energy use.

As always, economics comes into play here. In industrial processes, a large proportion of the costs of production are often energy costs. Every business will want to maximise profits by minimising costs, so investment will be made to reduce energy costs by making the production processes as energy efficient as possible. These measures are conducted for financial rather than sustainable motivations, but as a result many processes are already as efficient as possible.

The following presentation is about domestic energy use and highlights some of the main sources of wasted energy in the home:

http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=DomesticEnergy&page=slideshow

## Sustainable Energy Systems – Renewable Energy

After considering seriously reducing energy usage, and implementing as efficient appliances and technology as possible, we can think about using energy resources that are not finite in their resource. Such resources are known collectively as "Renewable Resources" and technology that harness these resources are called "Renewable Energy Technologies".

Almost all end uses of energy, such as lighting, electrical outfitting, refrigeration, telecommunications, water pumping and purification, food processing, grain milling and other energy applications can be supplied by technologies that use renewable sources. Furthermore, in many cases renewable energy technologies are technically and financially flexible; their operating costs are also lower and, once set up, they are not subject to fuel price fluctuations. The extensive use of renewable energy not only enables local production with secondary benefits of opportunities for job creation, but it also provides environmental benefits.

Figure 2.6.1 A list of the 4 types of energy we are aware of with their theoretical resource in the world.

Figure 2.2.4 sourced from Slideshare.net (Author: Skeen) under a Creative Commons Attribution- 3.0 license  
http://www.slideshare.net/skeen/game-plan-v10-1

  * We get most of our energy from the sun – as well as being the source for fossil fuels, it also creates wind power (through atmospheric heating), wave power (via the wind), direct (or new) solar energy, hydro power (through the water cycle) and biomass energy (energy from burning plants and trees)

  * Solar radiation that falls upon the Earth's land surfaces, approximately 220x106TWh, is 2,000 times greater than the world's annual primary energy demand, approximately 9410 million Tons of Petroleum Equivalent for 2002 (109,000TWh). Source: Aguilera et al [see reference 3]

  * Gravitational energy from the moon creates the tides and can be harvested as tidal energy

  * Heat in this sense was created when the earth was formed, is stored beneath the crust of the earth and can be harnessed in a form known as geothermal energy

Benefits of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy resources (sun, wind, water flow, geo-thermals) are distributed, in various quantities, as energy demand is decentralised so lower transmission losses can occur.

No implications of finite resources running out, a constant flow of energy from the sun provides an on-going source of energy.

Renewable resources are pollution free. Although the technology itself will create waste and use energy during its construction and maintenance phases, there is no burning of fossil fuels during operation so no pollution.

Carbon payback is a term referring to the time taken for the carbon used in the manufacture of the renewable energy technology to be saved by the carbon free energy it produces. This can be a short period of time for renewable energy technologies. For a wind turbine for example, the carbon payback can be as short as 6 months.

Drawbacks to Renewable Energy

The renewable resource is inherently intermittent: the sun does not always shine, the wind will not always blow, and water flows are seasonal. These factors need to be taken into account when designing renewable energy systems.

There is a low energy density of renewable resources compared to fossil fuels, for a fully renewable energy system a considerable reduction in consumption is therefore required.

There can be high initial capital costs with large scale renewable energy such as wind or hydro power. However this can be offset by the fact that there are comparably lower on-going costs as there isn't a constant need to purchase fuel (with the exception of biomass systems).

Some renewable technologies such as hydro can have significant environmental consequences such as flooding of natural habitats destroying ecosystems and displacing populations (2 million people were displaced by the flooding of the Yangtze in China for a hydro dam).

Below is a table that outlines most of the major renewable energies available and a description of the technologies that implement them.

## The Current Situation of Renewable Energy

Since 1973, which can be considered as the starting point of political and financial support for research and development into clean energy, renewable energies have undergone a profound transformation such that they are now a feasible source of energy for many services. Despite this and a strong annual energy production increase from renewable resources, market penetration remains low as it supplies a very small proportion of the global energy demand which has grown in the same period.

Currently, renewable energies supply approximately 13.5% (1,352 MegaTons in Petroleum Equivalent) of the total energy demanded, including commercial and traditional, biomass energy sources. Most of the 13.5% corresponds to the traditional use of biomass (for heating and cooking) and to the production of electricity from large scale hydropower dams. It is for this reason that the proportion of renewable energy in a given region is directly related to poverty levels; in Africa, 50% of its energy mix is from renewable sources.

The increase in energy coming from renewable sources has also grown noticeably in wealthy countries during the last decade. However; if renewable supplies are analysed with respect to the total global energy supplied; the percentage of renewable energy supplied has in fact diminished.

Despite this however, predicted market penetration of renewables remains at a moderate level. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts, in a best case scenario, that if further policies to increase the levels of renewable power were implemented that 8.6% of the commercial energy market would be gained by 2020 (2% in 1990), excluding hydropower.

The reasons for this continued, moderately low market penetration are many. Diffusion of new technologies requires time, especially in the energy sector; the transition from coal to petroleum based power generation took many decades.

Furthermore, subsidies for fossil fuels, whether transparent or hidden, slow the progress of renewables towards becoming a competitive alternative. Attempts to externalise energy system costs (i.e. including costs associated with environmental damage and repair originating from the use of fossil fuels in the direct fuel costs) have also not been put into practice.

Above text sourced from Aguilera et al (reference 3) and reproduced with permission from Engineers Without Boarders UK.

## Summary

This chapter has shown how society requires energy to survive and how this energy use has increased exponentially over the last century. The implications of the majority of this energy coming from fossil fuels has been demonstrated through the effects of resource depletion (with a specific focus on peak oil) and climate change.

A sustainable energy system has been suggested, which hinges on reducing energy consumption. This coupled with reducing wasted energy through increased efficiency and implementing on a bigger scale the use of renewable energy technologies will be necessary to keep the lights on through the next decades.

Online Teaching Material

University of Idaho: Renewable energy

 http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch06/ch06-p10.asp

Open University: Why Sustainable Energy Matters

 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397932

TED Talks

Planning for the end of oil

 http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_sears_planning_for_the_end_of_oil.html

Winning the oil end game

 http://www.ted.com/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html

Web Resources

The Oil Drum: Blogs and information about peak oil

www.theoildrum.net

A visualisation of Europes Energy:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2011/dec/23/europe-energy-interactive

Renewable UK: The voice of Wind and Marine energy

http://www.bwea.com/

Books

Renewable Energy Resources, John Twidell and Tony Weir, Taylor and Francis, London, 2009

Renewable energy, Power for a sustainable Future, Godfrey Boyle, Oxford University Press, 2004

##  References

  1. Saul Griffith, The Game Plan. A solution framework for the climate challenge. March 21, 2008, http://www.slideshare.net/skeen/game-plan-v10-1

  2. British Wind energy Association, http://www.bwea.com/onshore/index.html, Accessed 2nd March 2012

  3. Energy, Technologies for Human Development and Access to Basic Services, Authors: Miguel Ángel Egido Aguilera, Valentín Villarroel Ortega, Estefanía Caamaño Martín, Agustí Pérez-Foguet (coord.), Translation: Nkiru Onyechi, Editor: Sachi Findlater

  4. The open University, An Introduction to Energy resources

 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399545&section=1, Accessed 5th March 2012

  5. US Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html, Accessed 5th March 2012

  6. Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_US_high.svg, Accessed 5th March 2012

  7. Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kgrr/Sandbox/Peak_oil, Accessed 9th March 2012

  8. Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kgrr/Sandbox/Peak_oil, Accessed 8th March 2012

  9. David J.C. Mackay. Sustainable energy – without the hot air. UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3 Available free online from www.withouthotair.com

  10. Climate Lab http://climatelab.org/Coal_Power Accessed 6th March 2012

Chapter 3: Materials

An integral aspect of an engineer's role is converting energy and raw materials into technology, goods and services required by society. Look around you and pick an object. What materials were needed to make that object, and where did they come from? What processes did they go through to get to the final product? What will happen to the product once it's reached the end of its useful life?

Figure 3.1.1 Processes during the life of a magazine

Figure 3.1.1 sourced from Carbon Model under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License[  
http://carbonmodel.org/lca/](http://carbonmodel.org/lca/)

The pie chart below shows the percentage of global C02 emissions by source. The first chart shows that 64% is from energy usage and the second splits this up fairly evenly between industry, building and transport. The last chart is the industry section in more detail, showing that steel, cement, paper, plastic and aluminium are all the biggest contributors to C02 emissions worldwide.
Figure 3.1.2 Global sources of C02

Figure 3.1.2 sourced with permission from Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open. This book is available free to view online  
http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html

Having covered the sustainability issues surrounding energy, we will now cover material production. This will start by outlining the four main materials that are used by industry and other parts of society – steel, aluminium, plastic and cement. The main uses for each of these materials will be discussed and we will look into how they are produced.

The environmental concerns highlighted by their production will then be looked at, specifically the energy used in the materials' manufacture, known as "embodied energy" and the waste produced once they have finished their life. The chapter will conclude with steps an engineer can take to reduce the environmental impacts of the materials they use, and certain tools they can use to achieve this.

This chapter is limited in its scope by only covering the "big four" materials in depth, as the "other" section is a sizeable 45%. As well as the C02 effects of these other materials, there are huge environmental and social problems associated with the production and disposal of materials such as copper, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, gold, and other precious metals such as cobalt used in mobile phones. The mining of such precious metals specifically has devastated landscapes in Africa and South America, and the undistributed wealth patterns caused from distribution of these precious metals has brought on social unrest and in some case, civil war.

The resource depletion of common metals such as copper will eventually become a problem, as although they are highly recycled there is a finite amount of these metal ores left in the earth's crust, which will eventually run out. The continued disposal of all materials into a linear waste stream which outputs vast amounts of toxic waste into landfill is beginning to take its toll on landscape and natural ecosystems. This chapter will cover two impacts of the specified materials in terms of the energy required to get them into use, and the waste created by their disposal after use.

It is essential for an engineer to be aware of these problems with material production and disposal when undertaking a project, and undertake measure to mitigate these effects.

## Material Use Trends

As world population and associated consumption have grown, the use of natural resources to produce materials has increased exponentially. Steel and cement, used primarily for the construction industry are two of the most utilised materials in the world as demonstrated by the pie charts above. Both are an integral ingredient of the construction industry in rapidly expanding developing countries, and both use a large amount of energy to produce them.

Figure 3.2.1 World production of steel and cement (millions of tonnes) since 1930

Figure 3.2.1 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/web/terms/terms/index.htm)http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf

Figure 3.2.2: Projections for global steel and cement production

Figure 3.2.1 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/web/terms/terms/index.htm)http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf

As shown by figure 3.2.2, the production of steel and cement are set to increase too, with global cement production set to double in about 25 years. The production of most materials follows a similar growth pattern, with increase in usage set to continue as resources allow.

## Steel

Global production of steel is currently about 1000 million tonnes per year. Its high strength in compression and tension, high stiffness, and ductility make it a versatile and extremely useful material for an engineer, which is why steel is an integral part of many products.

Table 3.3.1 Worldwide Usage of Steel

Table 3.3.1 sourced with permission from Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open. This book is available free to view online  
http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html

The majority of steel is used as reinforcing bar in the construction industry, when it is coupled with concrete to make a successful combination to build cheap, strong and quick buildings and infrastructure. These are ideal conditions for developers looking to reduce costs and make profit quickly. The other uses are varied, from electricity pylons to stainless steel spoons.

Producing steel involves mining iron ore and heating it to a very high temperature (1000oC). The mining requires huge amounts of energy, as does the heating of the ore. All this energy contributes to steel's "embodied energy", a concept that will be explored when looking at the impacts of material production. The important part at this point is to grasp the scale of steel use worldwide – look outside and see what you can find that incorporates steel in the design. Multiply that by the number of streets, towns, cities, countries and continents in the world...

There some are environmental advantages of steel, one being the fact that it is highly recycled and can continue to be recycled indefinitely (although it loses its quality in each cycle). It is also durable if protected from corrosion, and can be salvaged for reuse, in some cases by up to 95%.

## Cement

Cement is covered next because together with steel it drives nearly half of all global CO2 emissions. Most of the demand is in rapidly developing countries such as India and China. As mentioned earlier cement suits a rapidly expanding population, as buildings can be put up cheaply and quickly and suit a versatile spread of building designs when cement is incorporated. It must be noted however that the quality and lifetime of buildings put up in this way are severely limited.

Cement is produced when limestone is heated to 1000oC which leaves lime. Lime mixed with water and sand harden when exposed to the atmosphere. This is cement, a versatile and very effective building material that can be used for a variety of purposes.

When cement is mixed with stones or blocks (called aggregate) and poured into a mould it's called concrete. Concrete has a lower embodied energy than cement as 75 – 80% is crushed aggregate (which does also have an embodied energy due to the energy used when mining it).

"With its versatility and low cost of materials, construction, and maintenance, concrete has emerged as the material of choice for new construction in the 20th and 21st centuries. With over 10 billion tons of concrete being produced annually, the concrete industry is the largest consumer of natural resources and one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. "

(Source: Lauren Midori Kuntz The green of The cement Industry [see reference 4])

Cement and steel go well together because concrete is weak in tension but steel has compression and tension strength. They bond well together, and the concrete protects the steel from corrosion. Reinforcing bars for use with concrete are the biggest application of steel worldwide.

Concrete is big emitter of CO2, because the reaction of turning limestone to lime itself gives off CO2 (50% of emissions). The energy required for this reaction involves the burning of fossil fuels which gives off more emissions (40%). The final 10% is from the energy used in grinding and transportation.

When walking around any urban centre it is impossible to go very far without seeing a building that has used concrete in its construction. Indeed any civil engineer will find it very difficult to be involved in any infrastructure or construction projects that don't use concrete.

A problem with cement, apart from the CO2 emissions is its low recyclability. At the end of its life it cannot be melted down to form new concrete. However, it can be broken up and used as aggregate for more concrete, but this often not the case. Concrete is also a very hazardous material to work with, and can cause burns to human skin.

##  Aluminium

Similar to steel, aluminium is a metal that has a multitude of uses. The difference is that aluminium is much less dense than steel, so is useful in applications when weight is an issue. For this reason it is popular in the aviation and automobile industry. These and other common uses of aluminium are listed below:

Figure 3.3.1 sourced with permission from Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open. This book is available free to view online  
http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html

Again the biggest use is in the construction industry, but unlike steel which is mixed with concrete for foundations and infrastructure, aluminium is used for cladding windows, doors and roofing.

Aluminium's lower density and versatility comes at a cost; the manufacturing process to produce it requires increased energy – an order of magnitude higher than steel.

For this reason it may seem unintuitive for packaging and other "use-once" applications to be made from aluminium which requires so much energy to be manufactured but enters the waste stream immediately in this form. However the cost benefits of aluminium's versatility and low density outweigh the energy costs of producing it and the environmental costs when it becomes a waste.

## Plastic

There is a huge variety of plastic types and properties, which leads to an associated large variety of end uses for plastic. Again, unless you are reading this in an open field (and even then) you will likely be in the vicinity of a plastic item that started its life as a hydrocarbon.

The first plastics were made from natural fibres such as tar or tree sap, but after the first world war as oil become widely available worldwide, the production of ethylene from this oil became the base of plastics. The fact that plastics come from oil is significant when considering the issues of peak oil as described in the previous chapter. It is also interesting to consider that if such long lasting and effective products could be made from oil, why are we simply burning it in vehicles for transportation?

Plastic has a variety of beneficial properties such as: electrical and thermal resistance, corrosion resistance, resistance to humidity, glossy shiny finish and chemical resistance. However the main beneficial property is that of being able to be injection moulded into intricate and detailed shapes, unlike steel which must be pressed. This makes it incredibly versatile and fundamentally, at current energy and oil prices, extremely cheap to manufacture.

This versatility and low price has meant that plastic is primarily used for one off uses, such as packaging for products. Other longer term uses can be found in the construction industry (in pipes, electrical fittings and fixtures) and the automobile industry.

The use of plastic has exploded over the last century, it's production doubles every 15 years and CO2 emissions from plastic are set to double from 2005 to 2050. As a result plastic waste has become an immense issue to deal with, especially in developing countries where the plastic industry and trade of plastic goods has increased at a much faster rate than the waste management schemes for this type of material.

Recycling of plastic is possible, but only once it is separated from other forms of waste and cleaned, and then separated into the different forms/types of plastic. Due to the nature of plastic being in large quantities of small units in packaging it often enters the waste stream dirty and mixed with other waste. Plastic takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, and this fact is becoming evident with large collections of plastics building up in the seas and countryside's of the world.

The full issues of waste will be considered in the next section, but again the important point is that an engineer, when considering materials for a design must understand the implications of the use of materials such as plastic.

Having considered the main four materials used by society we will now examine the problems caused by their manufacture and disposal.

## Problems with Material Use – Embodied Energy

The production of all of the materials mentioned above will involve processes that use energy. As highlighted in the previous chapter, this energy will in most cases comes from the burning of fossil fuels which have their associated environmental impacts. The term which refers to all the energy required to extract and process the raw materials, manufacture the product and transport it between each stage of production is known as the Embodied Energy.

Examples of materials and their level of embodied energy are:

High: Concrete, metals, asphalt, glass and petroleum based thermoplastics

Low: wood, fibres, re-used, re-cycled, by-products of other processes

Table 3.7.1 Embodied Energy of Various Construction Materials:

Table 3.7.1 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf

Materials with the lowest embodied energy intensities, such as concrete, bricks and timber, are usually consumed in large quantities. Materials with high energy content such as stainless steel are often used in much smaller amounts.

Another way of looking at embodied energy is considering the equivalent carbon dioxide released in the burning of fossil fuels to create the materials. The chart below shows this for various materials. Note the change in embodied energy units from GJ/m3 to GJ per tonne.

Table 3.7.2 Embodied energy and CO2

Table 3.7.2 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/7304E211-2A38-4420-90C5-9669E185203F/0/lec1_introduction_jao.pdf

## Problems with Material Production: Waste

The energy used to produce the materials for engineering projects is only half the problem. We must also consider what happens to the products after their "in-use" life is over. Some materials can be reused or recycled to go back to the "in-use" stream; however a large majority will end up as waste, and will need to be disposed of.

Example: Computers in the USA

30 million computers are thrown away each year in US (~14% are recycled now). Heavy metals present in the computers pollute water. Other materials will pollute the environment, and the space they take up put pressure on land usage. Tackling waste flows can reduce environmental impact and save money.

The electronics and automobile industry are beginning to design for the end of life

The following passage states some facts about waste in the UK:

The UK produces around 335 million tonnes of waste per year. Of this, 30 million tonnes is household waste and the majority (nearly 70 per cent) is not recycled. In landfill, biodegradable waste, such as food and garden waste, produces methane (CH4), a powerful greenhouse gas. There are more than 1500 landfill sites in the UK and, in 2001; they produced 25 per cent of the UK's methane emissions. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Along with the unnecessary carbon emissions associated with creating waste in the first place, this means that household waste contributes to climate change. Recycling more, preventing waste food and composting at home all help to reduce this impact.

Above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=426564&section=1.2.2

Note that only 30 out of a total of 335 million tonnes of waste per year are from the domestic setting. The rest will be industrial waste, where an engineer will be in a position to influence.

The following talk gives a good description of the harms of plastic pollution.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dianna_cohen_tough_truths_about_plastic_pollution.html

Often engineers are only concerned with getting a product to the market, and what happens to the product after it finishes its life is left to waste management systems and companies. With more thought put in during the design phase, products can be manufactured for ease of dismantle, re-use or more effective recycling at the end of their life.

## Problems With Material Use: Resource Shortages

The concepts of exponential growth applied to fossil fuel depletion are applicable to all resources required for material production. Iron ore for steel, hydrocarbons (oil) for plastic, lime for concrete and alumina for aluminium are all finite resources which at some point will deplete.

As more raw materials are mined, the ore becomes less easy to obtain so more energy is required to mine it. In fossil fuel terms this is referred to as Energy Return on Energy Invested and the same concept can be applied to obtaining natural resources In some cases the energy return is becoming very small for the energy invested.

The fact that the world will run out of materials is obvious, however this is a long way off. What's more pressing is the disappearance of good sites of extraction, causing more energy and money needed to be invested to exploit less convenient sites. This will in turn drive up the prices and create conflict due to the uneven geographical distribution of the resources.

## Design for Sustainable Material Use

We have discussed sustainability issues surrounding the major materials used for engineering, how they are used and how much of them we are currently consuming. Also highlighted were some of the environmental problems with the current production of the materials we use for engineering projects. At current consumption rates, it is obvious that at some point we will eventually run out of the natural resources we require for producing materials, the pollution caused by their manufacture and disposal will reach a critical level, and waste levels of used products will reach an unsupportable high.

The rest of the chapter will suggest concepts for sustainable material use. An engineer when working on any project that requires or uses materials should have these implications of material use in mind, and have these tools for sustainable material use ready to be implemented if at all possible.

The following hierarchy for dealing with waste can be applied to material selection and usage:

The waste hierarchy

The waste hierarchy is a management system for waste, which has three key objectives which are embodied in the hierarchy. These are minimising waste produced, making best use of waste that is produced and minimising any immediate or future risk of pollution from waste management practices. We could view the hierarchy as five levels:

  * Reduce waste – don't create waste in the first place.

  * Reuse 'waste' – use products for a purpose more than one time.

  * Recycle waste – reprocess waste materials to be used for new products.

  * Recover waste – incinerate waste and recover energy for heat and power generation.

  * Dispose of waste – place waste in landfill which is not suitable for recovery, recycling or reuse.

Above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=401578&section=1

The hierarchy demonstrates measures to reduce the effects of material usage, and the order of the measures is key. Although the above figure is aimed primarily at household waste, the same principals can be applied to industrial waste, and the engineering design process concerning material use.

## Reduce Consumption

Fromm states that we have changed from a society of "being" to a society of "having" [see reference 7]. This endless consumption is fuelled by companies providing the products, with ubiquitous advertising and selling techniques. The result of this is that much of production is consumer driven, and any major reduction in consumption will have to come from a systemic change in a consumer driven lifestyle.

Unfortunately this looks unlikely to change, and apart from changing their personal consumption patterns, not an area that an engineer can make a big change in. This section will therefore look at ways an engineer can make an impact – in the design and manufacture side of a product.

This is split into three parts –

  * incorporating design ideas that use less material from the start by optimising components.

  * by extending the life of a product which will reduce the amount produced over time.

  * the idea of increasing the efficiency of the manufacturing process (and why this won't necessarily lead to successful results).

Use less by design

A design specification for a product will include its purpose, size, shape and geometry. Also included will be material properties- strength, stiffness, lifetime as well as material available, and mainly, cost. It is usual that the factors of most importance will be suitability for the job and cost, with environmental factors low down the list.

It can be possible to optimise geometries of a component while still maintaining its strength and stiffness, thereby reducing the material content. An example of this is the "I" section steel beam often found in buildings. The cross section uses much less steel than a solid bar, but because of its shape it has the same strength properties as a full bar. The design could be optimised further by finding out where the principal loads will be, and making the bar thicker in these places, and thinner everywhere else.

However, to do this the structural engineer will have to order the bar specially made, and the supplier will no doubt charge a premium for this service. The reason for this is that is it usually easier (and therefore cheaper) to manufacture standardised components than bespoke designs.

Another example of designing for less material use can be found in concrete: currently rectangles and linear designs are used for ease and cost, but wasteful on concrete. Mould optimisation could save a huge amount of concrete, and therefore energy.

During manufacturing, metal goes through processes of trimming, cutting and machining to get to the final product. Metal lost in this way is known as "yield loss". 25% of steel and nearly half of aluminium never makes it into a component, but is recycled into fresh sheets. There is a huge amount of wasted energy in this process. Component designers don't always consider these manufacturing processes when designing a product. If they did, they could make parts tessellate, which would save wastage in manufacture.

The barriers to these tools of sustainable material use will soon become familiar; it is possible if the engineer were to design for it from the beginning but not currently implemented due to cost considerations and lack of incentives.

Make longer life products

One way of reducing consumption is to create products with a longer life. In developed countries most of the demand for steel and aluminium is to replace end of life products, as opposed to building new ones for growth. If products were designed to last longer, less material would be used in creating new products. However, it is not always the case that longer life products reduce the overall energy used. When considering products that use energy (such as a car), we must calculate energy savings from producing a more efficient design and weight that up with the embodied energy of manufacturing a new product.

When looking at the economic case for making longer life products, it will almost always be more expensive to make something more durable. Manufacturers will be looking for a quick payback so the cheaper, shorter term option will be more likely to be considered. This is taken to the extreme in some cases, where companies will incorporate into the design a fault or flaw that will make the product unusable after a set amount of time. In other words the product is designed to fail after a set time limit forcing the consumer to throw it away and purchase another one, thereby increasing sales and profit margins. This is known as "manufacture for obsolescence" and is common in mobile phone manufacture.

Concepts to make longer life products include:

  * durability – incorporating maintenance and restoration

  * upgrading – including modular and adaptable design

  * cascading – find new uses for the product in its current condition

  * design for reuse and recycling when finished

Above text sourced with permission from Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open. This book is available free to view online

http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html

Figure 2.11.3 Energy and C02 Consumption of Global Steel Production Since 1975

Image sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/C31B4488-55CE-461E-B18F-FCBECAA4A5EA/0/lec2_construction.pdf](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/C31B4488-55CE-461E-B18F-FCBECAA4A5EA/0/lec2_construction.pdf)

The graph above shows how the energy consumption per tonne of steel in the EU has decreased by almost half in the last 25 years. The reason for this is that the main cost of steel production is energy; energy is required to extract ore by mining processes, and large amounts of energy is needed to convert the ore into a liquid ready for pouring or casting.

Steel manufacturers want to maximise profits and will achieve this by lowering costs. Investment is put into new technology that increases efficiency and therefore saves money. The energy consumption per tonne has decreased, but the number of tonnes produced has increased, resulting in a net increase of energy use and associated carbon emissions. The graph shows that production efficiency is already very high due to cost considerations, so very little energy reductions can be made from a sustainability point of view.

The same concepts are true for plastic, in that the manufacturing processes are already efficient. The IEA estimates it could be made 15% more efficient.

## Re-use Materials at End of Life

Normally design engineers only consider the life of their product up to its use. Some will consider maintenance and servicing during its life, but most assume their responsibility will stop once the product has finished its useful life time. To reduce waste and the energy required in building a new product, it is possible to design certain components of a machine so they can be used for another purpose, or in fact the whole product can be reused.

Examples of this include:

1. Shipping containers re-used as lock-ups for storage

2. Car dismantle companies breaking up old cars to re-use components

3. Ship breaking in India – panels are oxyacetylene torched into segments and re-rolled into sheets

In the case of concrete, if moulds were standardised (like Lego bricks), then once the structure was de-constructed, the individual brick could be re-used for other applications. The energy to transport the old piece of concrete would be much less than that to make new concrete from scratch.

For plastic, new plastic products are cheap, so there is often little motivation for reusing plastic at end of life, so it is just thrown away. However, industrial packaging is a big contributor of waste and emissions in the plastics game; there is scope here for large savings by designing packaging that can be re-used. Again there is little financial incentive for companies to do this so it's unlikely this will happen. Unfortunately plastic is often used in low value applications because it is cheap and versatile. This means there are few options for re-use or life extension.

One way of saving energy and waste can be to divert manufacturing scrap before it is sent to be melted down for recycling. Manufacturing scrap can come from yield losses as described above, over ordering, or defects. An example of this can be found in the sheet metal business. "Blanking skeletons" are the sheets left over that have had shapes cut out of them. Normally they are cut up and sent for recycling, but some companies take the blanking sheets and cut smaller shapes out of what's left – reducing the energy used in recycling and producing components out of what would have been thrown away. Another example is extruding aluminium swarf into new sheets of aluminium for reuse.

In the aerospace industry, where reducing component weight is essential, 90% of the aluminium is cut away from a big block and ends up as swarf. However, these two examples are the exception rather than the norm. Currently most manufacturing scrap is sent straight for recycling due to lack of awareness, the current design of the waste handling systems and alloy mixing in waste streams which tend to inhibit efforts to divert manufacturing scrap from recycling.

Design features to increase re-use of components at the end of their lives include:

Design to be adaptable

  * standardised part spacing and connections

  * specialised parts only at exterior locations (easy to remove)

  * Anticipate possible future needs and design for upgrades

Design for easy repair and deconstruction

  * avoid mixed materials and coatings

  * enable easy and quick part replacement or separation

  * develop deconstruction plan

## Recycling and Recovery of Waste

Recycling consumes less energy, and therefore produces less CO2, than extracting and processing raw materials. In 2008, the amount recycled in the UK saved the same amount of CO2 (18 million tonnes) as taking five million cars off the road, even with only 31 per cent of household waste being recycled or composted. Recycling also reduces the need for extracting (mining, quarrying and logging), refining and processing raw materials, all of which cause substantial air and water pollution.

Above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=426564&section=1.2.2

Recycling of Metals

In the UK, consumers discard 84% of all cans, which means the overall rate of aluminium waste, after counting for production losses is 88%. As the cost of energy rises, so does the cost of production of metals. As a result the value of scrap metal increases. This has led to an increase in metal being sold for scrap, and in UK specifically, an increase in theft of metals for scrap, such as lead being stolen from church roofs or copper cables being stolen from the side of railways. The energy cost of recycling metal is much less than producing it from ore, and it is easier to separate ferrous metal from the waste stream as magnets can be used.

Recycling of Plastic

Plastic has a high recyclability, however different types of plastic cannot be mixed and additives and fillers added during the manufacturing process tend to degrade the plastics. As a result, plastic is easy to recycle in the factory, but once in the waste stream very difficult to separate.

The following is a talk about successful recycling of plastic in the USA

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle.html

There are 4 levels of plastic recycling:

  * Primary – directly re-extruded, possible only where a pure waste stream exists in the factory

  * Secondary – A mechanical process where waste plastic is ground into small chips or powder, washed and dried and converted to resin for re-use. Contaminants reduce the quality of recycled plastic

  * Tertiary – Involves pyrolysis (burning without oxygen). This chemically breaks down plastic into feedstock. Technically feasible but energy and financial cost is high

  * Quaternary – Plastic is burnt for heat as energy recovery. If this process is completed efficiently a very small amount of volatile organic compounds will be released. This could be considered a better step than land fill, as at least energy is recovered from the process.

Above text sourced with permission from Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open. This book is available free to view online[  
http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html](http://withbotheyesopen.com/index.html)

Many cities have incinerators, which burn waste and recovery the heat gained from the process for district heating systems and electricity production. This is sometimes considered a source of renewable energy, but it is a questionable term as generally the waste products were not manufactured with renewable resources. The efficiency of the burn process is paramount, as the emissions from an incinerator can be toxic.

As resources become scarce and energy costs and therefore manufacturing costs become high, the cost benefits of recycling will increase and more recycling will occur. Currently though, recycling rates are quite low compared to the amount of waste produced.

Engineers can mitigate against these issues by designing products with a higher recyclability. This can be done by avoiding mixing different materials where possible, as they will have to be separated before recycling. In the case of plastics, reducing the scale and variety of plastics on the market would increase recycling rate too.

## Sustainable Materials

In some cases, materials can be replaced by sustainable substitutes. Factors affecting a material choice are usually material properties, suitability for the job, availability and cost. In choosing sustainable material substitutes it may be that you have to compromise with one of the parameters for selection – such as strength, life of the materials, or cost. Below is an outline of materials and suggestions for alternatives.

Masonry can be used in place of concrete; it can be as strong and it releases lower emissions during its manufacture. However, must be still be bonded with cement, and it cannot be moulded or reinforced. The concrete industry is aware of the environmental effects of its actions, and in recent years that has been a move to reduce the emissions and other detrimental effects of concrete.

Steel can sometimes be used as a substitute for concrete columns, beams, foundation piles. Although steel can be recycled, and you can do the same job with much less steel than concrete, it is more expensive and produces more emissions per unit mass or unit stiffness than concrete.

Timber can be used as a replacement for steel and concrete, it has a higher strength and stiffness per unit of embodied energy, but it is not nearly as durable. Also, it must be protected from fine rot. Timber will be looked into as a potential material for buildings in the next chapter.

Figure 2.14.1 Stiffness of various materials and embodied energy per stiffness

Figure 2.14.1 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/C31B4488-55CE-461E-B18F-FCBECAA4A5EA/0/lec2_construction.pdf](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/C31B4488-55CE-461E-B18F-FCBECAA4A5EA/0/lec2_construction.pdf)

As shown in Figure 2.12.1 above figure, for a relatively similar stiffness there is a greatly reduced embodied energy for wood and brick compared to concrete, steel and aluminium. Note however that the stiffness is measured in compression only, and in many application compression and tension are required.

Bio-ethylene from sugar can be used as substitute for crude oil. Ethylene is less energy intensive, and has the advantage of being biodegradable. This conserved oil supplies and will offer less of a problem with waste issues. However, land is required to grow sugar cane and there are social and environmental problems with taking land away from growing food to growing plastics for consumer goods.

It has been demonstrated that materials with a lower environmental impact can replace traditional materials, and should be considered in the design process by engineers. However, issues such as cost and lifetime of materials will be important factors in the decision making process.

## Sustainable Materials Concepts for Engineers

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)

LCA is the process of evaluating the effects that a product has on the environment over the entire period of it's life cycle- it covers all processes required: extraction, processing, manufacture, distribution, use, reuse, maintenance, and disposal. It could be called a "Cradle to Grave" approach.

LCA can be a useful tool to consider the environmental impacts of engineering projects. It's key features are that it is product orientated, as most industrial activity evolves around products. It is also holistic and integrative in that it integrates all the problems to avoid problem shifting. It is a quantitative tool based on scientific data and provides useful information for decision making with environmental consequences.

Image sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/NR/rdonlyres/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/C31B4488-55CE-461E-B18F-FCBECAA4A5EA/0/lec2_construction.pdf](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/web/terms/terms/index.htm)
Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology is the means by which humanity can deliberately and rationally approach and maintain a desirable carrying capacity, given continued economic, cultural, and technological evolution. The concept requires that an industrial system be viewed not in isolation from its surrounding systems, but in concert with them. It is a systems view in which one seeks to optimize the total materials cycle from virgin material, to finished material, to component, to product, to obsolete product, and to ultimate disposal. Factors to be optimized include resources, energy, and capital.

Image sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
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The above concepts have all come about from the inherent problems associated with material use and disposal in industrial systems. They are all different ways of providing and alternative to the current system of design a product, sell it, throw it away. These ideas are not relatively new in the engineering world, but are still not widely implemented.

## Summary

We have seen in this chapter that materials are used for everything we do, that use of materials has increased steadily over time and the trends are set to continue to increase. The impact of this material use is in the embodied energy of the materials, the waste created by them and the depleting resources seen as a result.

It has been shown that engineers can reduce the unsustainable nature of material production by having a holistic view of materials from the outset, and incorporating sustainability into produce design. This can be done by reducing consumption through longer life design, design for re-use at the end of life, and design for recyclability. We have also considered designing to incorporate sustainable materials as substitutes to traditional materials.

It is clear that more needs to be done in the field of sustainable materials, reducing the energy in manufacture, reducing the amount of materials used and research into natural substitutes. As demonstrated in most cases, the leading impetus is the business case, and usually the cheapest option will be the driving force. In the same way, it is the scale of consumption driving by thirst for profit through continuous sales that is the cause of the impact of material use, and consumers only pay for the end product – they don't take account for any "externalities" such as social or environmental harm. It is this deeper issue that needs to be addressed in society to implement a more sustainable trajectory.

## Further Reading

Online Teaching Resources

MIT Opencourseware: Design for Sustainability

 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm?sequence=1

Urban and Rural Waste in China Open Learn

 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=401578&section=1

Film: The Story of Stuff

 http://www.storyofstuff.org/2011/02/14/story-of-stuff-2/

University of Idaho: Reduce Reuse Recycle

 http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch03/ch03-p03.asp

Websites

Design for sustainability

http://www.design-4-sustainability.com/materials

Sustainable Materials

http://sustainablematerials.com/

Books

Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open, Julian M Allwood  
Jonathan M Cullennhttp://withbotheyesopen.com/read.php?c=2

##  References

1. http://carbonmodel.org/lca/ accessed 28th february

2. Allwood J.M., Cullen J.M., Carruth M.A., Cooper D.R., McBrien M., Milford R.L., Moynihan M., Patel A.C.H (2012) Sustainable Materials: with both eyes open, UIT Cambridge, England

http://withbotheyesopen.com/read.php?c=2 Accessed 13th March 2012

3. Sustainable Design: The Role of the Construction Industry , John Ochsendorf 2004 .

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm

Accessed 28th March 2012

4. The "greening" of the concrete industry: factors contributing to sustainable concrete, Kuntz, Lauren Midori, 2004

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/34594

Accessed 13th February 2012

5. Waste, Lab Space, The Open University, http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=426564&section=1.2.2

Accessed 14th March 2012

6. Waste Hierarchy, Open University Open Learn

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=401578&section=1

Accessed on 12th March 2012

7. Sustainability by Design: a subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture, John R. Ehrenfeld, 2008, Yale University Press

8. Individual actions: Waste, Open Learn, the Open University,

http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=426564&section=1.2.2

Accessed on 1st March 2012
Chapter 4: Water

For the vast majority of human activities – be that domestic, industrial, or agricultural – we require fresh water. It is a resource often taken for granted in more economically developed countries; people assume that fresh water will be available when the tap is turned on, and like electricity do not question the processes or constraints involved in delivering it. However for many people in the world, easily available fresh water is not the case and finding clean fresh water for drinking, cleaning and growing plants is a serious challenge. The fresh water systems of the planet are under threat from climate change, unsustainable use and pollution.

Engineers have a role in providing the infrastructure to supply water to the world's population. Andrew Mylius (2000) stated "The engineers that help realise the water supply opportunities will be this century's most valued peace keepers. Competition for scarce water resources is increasingly a source of political tension. Engineering can play a major role in defusing it." [See reference 1]

The image we have of the Earth as the 'Blue Planet' is slightly misleading when we consider the water available for our use. Most of the Earth is covered by seas and oceans accounting for over 97% of total water on the planet, leaving less than 3% of the planet's water that is not salty (potable). Of the freshwater that is present, 2 percent is locked in icecaps and glaciers, and a large proportion of the remaining 1 percent lies too far underground to exploit" [See reference 2]

Global Water Volumes:

Total volume = 1.40 billion cubic kilometres

Freshwater = 35 million cubic kilometres (less than 3% of all water)

Usable freshwater approx. 200,000 cubic kilometres (less than 1% of freshwater) [see reference 3]

This chapter will outline the problems facing the world today in terms of water. Water supply and water scarcity of nations worldwide will be highlighted, introducing the term "water debt". We will look in detail at what the global uses of water are, desalination, water pollution before finally looking at international standards for water supply and distribution.

## The Hydrological Cycle

Figure 4.1.1 Flows within the hydrological cycle

Figure 4.1.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Annually, around 505,000km3 of water is evaporated from the oceans, and 72,000km3/year is evaporated from land surfaces to join the hydrological cycle. This gives a total of around 577,000km3/year active in the global water cycle. Of this total, approximately 458,000km3/year (80%) falls back onto the oceans and only 20% (119,000km3/year) falls onto the land.

Of the 20% freshwater falling on land as precipitation, most is transpired back into the atmosphere almost immediately, leaving only 8% of the total active volume on the

ground. Much of this forms groundwater that may become inaccessible and/or polluted and surface water which may become polluted.

Globally, 7,000km3 more water is stored on land in March than in September when 600km3 more is stored in the atmosphere than in March. [see reference 6].

## Water Supply and Water Scarcity

Figure 4.2.1 Water Supply of a selection of countries [see reference 7]

Figure 4.2.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

In many countries, only a very small proportion of available water is actually extracted for use. The total resource that is available to a country or a region is usually termed the 'supply'. The amount that we extract for use is termed the 'withdrawal'.

Figure 4.2.2 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

The figure above shows the availability of fresh water for a selection of countries. Highlighted on the graph are levels of regular, chronic and absolute water scarcity. The table below outlines the figures for these levels. 18 countries are in the absolute scarcity category, and a further 4 have chronic water scarcity status.

Table 4.2.1 Water stress and scarcity categories [see reference 11]

Table 4.2.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

By widely-used water stress definitions, the UK is currently subject to occasional or local water stress. This is evident from our infrequent experiences of hosepipe bans and

pleas for water conservation from water companies. As climate changes and precipitation patterns alter, the occurrence of water stress is predicted to become more widespread.

This, combined with population increases in many places, will result in more extensive water shortages relative to demand. As with all country data this is aggregated average information. Within these countries, particular regions may be relatively more water-rich or water-poor. For example, the South East of England is considerably more water-stressed than Northern Scotland.

Definitions

It is important to get a feel for what this actually means. Absolute scarcity in these terms (500m3/person/year) is less than 1.5 cubic meters of water per person per day. This seems like a lot, but usually we are only thinking about the domestic portion of water use rather than the per capita water availability necessary to maintain a functioning economy. Lack of water availability can inhibit industrial and economic development.

For general human health requirements, volumes required are as follow:

  * Normal Recommended 50 litres per person per day

  * Minimum Recommended 30 litres per person per day (5 litres for cooking and drinking, 25 litres for hygiene)

  * Emergency Sphere guidelines 15 litres per person per day [see reference 12]

Some of the most water scarce countries are small island nations such as Malta (50m3/capita/year) and the Maldives (105m3/capita/year), Singapore (144m3/capita/year), and those of the Middle East region: Kuwait (10), UAE (66), Libya (108), Saudi Arabia (109), Bahrain (149), Qatar (164), Jordan (174), Yemen (220), Israel (339). High demand for industrial purposes and meeting domestic needs of increasing populations lead to over-use of water in some of these places.

## Water Debt

If the amount of ground water withdrawn exceeds natural inflow, there is a water debt . In such cases, water should be considered as a non-renewable resource that is being mined. As the world's population and industrial production of goods increase, the use of water will also accelerate. The world per capita use of water in 1975 was about 700m3 /year giving a total human use of 3850 km3/year. In 2006 the world use of water was about 6000 km3 / year, which is a significant fraction of the naturally available fresh water. [see reference 13]

## Water Debt

Figure 4.3.1 Water debt for of the most indebted countries [see reference 14]

Figure 4.3.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Some water-stressed countries withdraw considerably more water than is renewed annually, leading to significant 'water debt'. Countries are arranged here in descending order of water debt severity.

Kuwait is currently the world's most water scarce nation and also the worst water debt country, with an annual renewable freshwater supply of approximately 0.02km3/year and an annual freshwater withdrawal of around 0.54km3/year (2700% of available renewable supply). Saudi Arabia extracts the greatest volume of water (14.62 km3/year) beyond its renewable supply (2.4km3/year) and uses 7 times more than it has available, but UAE (1.91km3/year debt and consumption 10 times renewable supply) and Libya (4km3/year and nearly 8 times supply) are also in severe water debt.

However, even relatively water-rich countries can exceed their renewable supply; Uzbekistan has approximately 50.4km3/year renewable available freshwater, but withdraws around 58.05km3/year (115% of available supply). Uzbekistan has experienced the detrimental effects of this unsustainable over-use of freshwater and has witnessed the deterioration of the Aral Sea and its associated industry.

In comparison:

  * USA withdraws only around 20% of available renewable supply

  * UK withdraws only around 10% of available renewable supply

  * Canada withdraws only around 1.5% of available renewable supply

  * Brazil withdraws only around 0.5% of available renewable supply

Water-debt countries and regions meet their water withdrawals beyond the renewable supply in a number of ways, including: drawing water across political boundaries, or depleting 'fossil aquifers' in some cases causing not only extraction of ancient groundwater reserves, but also causing irreparable collapse of the geological structure, thus preventing future recharge.

Energy-rich but water-poor countries, such as the water-stressed and water-debt oil-producing countries of the Middle East may use desalination techniques to produce freshwater from sea water, which will be discussed next.

##  Desalination

Desalination is the process of converting seawater into freshwater. Seawater contains about 3.5% salt, and one cubic meter of sea water contains around 40kg of salt. To produce 'freshwater' the salt content must be reduced to less than 0.05%.

As well as being costly in terms of energy, desalination also has environmental impacts: discharge of very salty water may locally kill plants and animals intolerant to salt and alter the habitat and local ecosystems.

Figure 4.4.1 Flow representation of desalination

Figure 4.4.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

The reverse osmosis method, the most widely used for desalination of sea water, requires large amounts of energy in order to push source water through a membrane at a pressure of around 7,000 bar (100,000psi)[see reference 15]. The high-tech membranes are themselves expensive, although costs are reducing as the technology matures and the market grows. They require cleaning with chemicals, which then contribute to the problem of waste disposal together with the excessively salty wastewater produced by the process.

Only those countries which are water-poor but energy-rich, such as oil-producing nations in the Middle East, have the necessary combination of "desperation, wealth, and cheap energy" [15] that make desalination worth consideration. Desalination is currently limited to locations with a specific concentration of factors. Desalination plants on a large scale have high capital costs and high running costs. Many of the existing plants have been built adjacent to coastal power plants in order to consolidate impact and reduce costs associated with power transmission and water intake pipe work[see reference 15].

It is possible to purify salty or brackish water using the power of the sun, through a process known as Solar Distillation. A technical brief of the process can be found here:

http://practicalaction.org/solar-distillation-1

Postel has the following insights about desalination:

"Desalinating brackish water – which is too salty to drink but much less salty than ocean water – is among the most rapidly growing uses of desalination. ... it typically costs less than half as much as seawater desalination." [see reference 16]

"...desalination holds out the unrealistic hope of a supply-side solution, which delays the onset of the water efficiency revolution so urgently needed." [see reference 16]

## Global Use of Water

Figure 4.5.1 Global water by sector use since 1900

Figure 4.5.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

As mentioned in the first chapter, water use has increased exponentially over the last century. This is due not only to an increase in population and their direct water need, but also that population's associated consumption of food and manufactured goods which both consume water.

"During the last 50 years water use worldwide has grown fourfold now accounting for roughly 10% of total river and groundwater flow from land to sea globally" [see reference 17]

Figure 4.5.2 Global freshwater use by sector [see reference 18, 19]

Figure 4.5.2 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Figure 4.5.3 Water use by sector for a selection of countries [see reference 20,21]

Figure 4.5.3 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes.  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Of the freshwater that is withdrawn for human use, in the industrial world, the bulk of water is used for industry. In developing countries the bulk is used for agriculture and in places like Afghanistan and Nepal, this is 99%. In all countries, domestic use is a small, but important part.

Worldwide the biggest use of water by far is agriculture. We will now look into more detail at what this water is used for in agriculture, then manufacturing and finally breaking down domestic use in the UK.

Agricultural Water Use

Figure 4.5.4 Use of water in agriculture

Figure 4.5.4 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

As the human population increases, there is growing concern that there won't be sufficient water to grow the food required. As the figure shows, meat takes much more water to produce than cereals, and a steady increase in meat consumption has increased worldwide water stress. [see reference 22]

Table 4.5.1 Water required per kg of a variety of food

Sustainable food production will be covered in more depth in the next chapter but it is important to grasp at this stage the direct link between food and water, and the world reliance on both.

Industrial Water Use

Manufacturing processes of various types often require large amounts of water. In many cases these processes were developed at a time when water scarcity was less realised than it now is. Water conservation measures taken by industry can be improved with the development of new equipment and processes that require less water.

Figure 4.5.5 Water required for selection of manufacturing processes

Figure 4.4.1 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Table 4.5.2 Water use of various manufacturing processes [see reference 24]

Much additional water is used in the process of manufacture for non-invasive processes such as cooling. While this does not necessarily greatly reduce river flow, if that is the source, it can result in changes to the river's ecological system. Downstream of a warm water discharge, the change in river water temperature may encourage growth of algal blooms which can suffocate other flora and fauna inhabitants.

Domestic Water Use

Figure 4.5.6 Domestic water use in the UK

Figure 4.4.1 adapted and sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

Although domestic water use accounts for only a small fraction of the total, it is concentrated in urban areas where it may cause local problems. There are many ways in which domestic water use could be reduced at relatively small cost. Water pricing policies will become increasingly important. Public perception of water is based on price and availability.

**  
**Table 4.5.3 Domestic water use in the UK [see reference 24]

Table 4.5.3 sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/science/physics-and-astronomy/physics/renewable-energy

All water that is piped into homes in the UK is treated to very high EU quality standards. Much of the water we use domestically is consumed in non-potable uses such as gardening and flushing toilets. Only uses including drinking, cooking and for baths and showers need to be potable for health reasons. These uses account for only around one third of total supply. see reference [25]

Note: Dishwasher figures vary depending on the type of dishwasher. Some estimates are as low as 12-16 litres per load, which is substantially less than washing by hand [30], although energy considerations must also be taken into account when comparing the two.

## Energy Costs of Water

Table 2.5.3 Energy costs of stricter water treatment legislation

Table 2.5.3 sourced from The ImpEE Project, The Cambridge-MIT institute. The ImpEE website is designed as an educational resource. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes  
http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

In their 2001 Annual report, Thames Water highlighted the problem of treating water to ever higher standards and the effect that the increased energy consumption has on climate change. [26] The water sector is identified as the third most energy intensive sector in the UK according to the Marshall report on energy use in UK [see reference 27].

##  Pollution

In 1962 US Biologist Rachel Carson published her ground-breaking book "Silent Spring" which initiated an awakening about the impact of human activities as never really considered before. [28] Prior to this revolutionary thinking the widespread understanding and practice had been that the earth and its systems are so vast that human activity could have no lasting impact on them. As such waste was dealt with by applying the "dilute and disperse" philosophy whereby waste (solid, liquid or gaseous) was released to the environment continuously, but in small unit quantities. The idea was that the environmental systems would be able to process this waste if it was sufficiently diffused.

## International Conference on Water and the Environment

In 1992 the International Conference on Water and the Environment was held in Dublin, Ireland. The output from this conference was a declaration regarding water that was presented to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that was held in Rio de Janeiro in June that year where the ideas from the 1987 UN Report (the Brundtland Report), were discussed and developed. The Rio conference, which came to be known as the "Earth Summit", was attended by one-hundred-and-eighteen heads of government and was the major turning point in bringing the issues of sustainability and sustainable development onto the international political stage. The inclusion of the Dublin Principles in the conference debate helped to highlight the importance of water as a resource for environmental protection and human development. The Dublin Principles remain the standard for consideration of the issues surrounding water resource use and protection. The principles are listed below:

Principle No. 1: Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable resource, essential to sustain life, development and the environment. Since water sustains life, effective management of water resources demands a holistic approach, linking social and economic development with protection of natural ecosystems. Effective management links land and water uses across the whole of a catchment area or ground water aquifer.

Principle No. 2: Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving users, planners and policy-makers at all levels.

The participatory approach involves raising awareness of the importance of water among policy-makers and the general public. It means that decisions are taken at the lowest appropriate level, with full public consultation and involvement of users in the planning and implementation of water projects.

Principle No. 3: Women play a central part in the provision, management and safeguarding of water.

This pivotal role of women as providers and users of water and guardians of the living environment has seldom been reflected in institutional arrangements for the development and management of water resources. Acceptance and implementation of this principle requires positive policies to address women's specific needs and to equip and empower women to participate at all levels in water resources programmes, including decision-making and implementation, in ways defined by them.

Principle No. 4: Water has an economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognised as an economic good.

Within this principle, it is vital to recognise first the basic right of all human beings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an affordable price. Past failure to recognise the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource. Managing water as an economic good is an important way of achieving efficient and equitable use, and of encouraging conservation and protection of water resources.

Declaration of the International Conference on Water and the Environment, Dublin, Ireland, 26th-31st January 1992 available at the UN's  World Meteorological Organization

##  Hydropolitics

Many countries are facing a global water shortage that is linked to their food supply. There are a number of other ways in which water supply may affect world politics. Conflict events often fall under several categories of definition listed below.

Control of Water Resources: Water supplies or access to water at the root of tensions

Military Tool: Water resources, or water systems themselves used by a nation or state as a weapon during military action

Political Tool: Water resources, or water systems themselves, used by a nation, state or non-state actors for a political goal

Terrorism: Water resources, or water systems, as targets or tools of violence or coercion by non-state actor

Military Target: Water resource systems as targets of military actions by nations or states

Development Disputes: Water resources or systems as source of contention in the context of social and economic development [see reference 29]

## Summary

Often the focus on sustainability issues centres around energy supplies, and the depletion of non-renewable resources. This chapter has outlined that access to clean water is as much of a problem if not more so, and although considered a ubiquitous renewable resources, we have shown this is only the case if treated with care and consumed and treated in a sustainable manner.

Water is essential for life, and freshwater supplies worldwide are depleting through over use and pollution. We have covered water supply worldwide, which countries are in water debt and what the major uses for water are worldwide. Water supply is becoming an increasingly important geopolitical point of concern, and engineers with their ability to design and implement infrastructure for water supply, and with knowledge on sustainable water systems will be invaluable in advising policy decision making and ensuring the worlds growing population has access to the element essential for survival.

## Further Reading

The following online resources outline sustainable water use:

 http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch07/index.asp

The following chapters are from the Sustainability – the geography perspective

 http://equellatemp.nottingham.ac.uk/uon/items/6b51401f-d00f-c72b-fad6-319393a548ca/1/ViewIMS.jsp

European Environment Agency- Sustainable Water Use Policies

 http://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/water/water-resources/policies-and-measures-to-promote-sustainable-water-use

Sustainable Water Solutions

http://www.globalstewards.org/water.htm

Engineers Without Borders – Water and Sanitation Resources

http://www.ewb-uk.org/knowledge/watsan

The Water, Engineering and Development Centre at Loughborough University have a wealth of resources focused on water in development situations, and also offer Higher Education level courses in the subjects

http://wedc.lboro.ac.uk/

Practical Action are an international NGO that work in developing countries under a range of engineering and development themes. Their online Practical Answers portal provide technical briefs on a range of subjects. Below is the link for water:

 http://practicalaction.org/water-and-sanitation-answers

##  References

This chapter is available online from the Improving Engineering Education Project, Cambridge University. Unless otherwise stated, text and figures are from  http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow

From the source: "This material was produced as a part of the ImpEE Project at the University of Cambridge. It may be reproduced, modified and used freely for educational purposes.

1. Mylius, Andrew (2000) "Keeping the Peace" New Civil Engineer, 20th April 2000, pp 14-15

2. Postel, Sandra (1992) "The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity" Earthscan, London, p27

3. Volumes taken from: Gleick, Peter (2001) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, p21 Table 2.1:major stocks of water on Earth.

4. Improving Engineering Education Camridge  http://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/impee/?section=topics&topic=water&page=slideshow Accessed on 3rd March

5. Source: Gleick, Peter (2001) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, p22

6. Atmospheric water volume taken from Ball, Philip (1999) "H2O: A Biography of Water" Pheonix/Orion, London.

7. Annual freshwater resources data taken from Gleick, Peter (2003) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, pp239-242, Table 1: Total Renewable Freshwater Supply, by Country (2002 Update

8. Annual freshwater withdrawals data taken from Gleick, Peter (2003) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, pp245-251, Table 2: Freshwater Withdrawals, by Country and Sector (2002 Update)

9.Countries arranged in descending order of Human Development Index rank as taken from United Nations Development Programme (2005) "The Human Development Report – International Cooperation at a Crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world" Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York

10. Population data from World Bank (2003) "World Development Indicators 2003" The World Bank, Washington, 2002 figures

11. Definitions of limits of water stress from Gleick, Peter (2003) "The World's Water:

The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, p99, Table 4.2: Water Stress

12. Sphere Project (2000) "Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response" Oxfam Publishing, p30, available at http://www.sphereproject.org

13. 'Environmental Science - Earth as a Living Planet', Daniel B Botkin and Edward A Keller. pub. John Wiley & Sons 2005

14. Annual freshwater resources data taken from Gleick, Peter (2003) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, (2002 Update)

15. McDonald, Bernadette & Douglas, Jehl (eds.) (2003) "Whose Water Is It?: The unquenchable thirst of a water hungry world" National Geographic Society, Washington, pp199-211

16. Postel, Sandra (1992) "The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity" Earthscan, London, pp45-7

17. Houghton, John (1997) "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing" Cambridge University Press, p.117

18. Postel, Sandra (1992) "The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity", Earthscan, London.

19. Houghton, John (1997) "Global Warming: The Complete Briefing" Cambridge University Press

20. Gleick, Peter (2003) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, pp245-251, Table 2: Freshwater Withdrawals, by Country and Sector (2002 Update)

21. Countries arranged in descending order of Human Development Index rank as taken from United Nations Development Programme. United Nations Development Programme (2005) "The Human Development Report – International Co-operation at a Crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world" Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York

22. Open University (1995) "S268: Physical Resources and Environment" Block 3, pp6

23. Figures for meat - pork and chicken: Brown, Lester & Halweil, Brian (1998) "China's Water Shortage Could Shake World Food Security" World Watch, July/August 1998, pp10-21

24. Open University (1995) "Physical Resources and Environment" Block 3, pp6

25. Environment Agency 2001 "Conserving water in Buildings (September 2001)" Water Resources available at  The Environment Agency Website

26. Thames Water (2001) "Environment and Conservation Review 2001" pg 4.

27. Marshall, Lord (1998) "Economic Instruments and the Business Use of Energy" HM Treasury, November 1998

28. Carson, Rachel (1962) "Silent Spring" Penguin, London

29. Definitions from: Gleick, Peter (2001) "The World's Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources" Island Press, pp182-3

30. http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=314
Chapter 5: Food and Agriculture

Agriculture worldwide is facing the daunting challenges of providing for an increasing population that has changing food consumption patterns under the constraints of natural resource scarcity, environmental degradation, climate change, and a restructuring global economy. In addition, consumers are increasingly conscious about the sources of their food and how it is produced. Consumer concerns can translate into political and market demands for addressing the challenges. Thus, agriculture appears to be at a pivotal stage in terms of societal demands for agricultural systems with improved sustainability—that is, systems that address and balance social, economic, and environmental performance, and increase robustness in the face of new challenges. [see reference 1]

As with water, food is essential for life. The trends in food production have changed significantly over the last century, as population increases and the use of fossil fuels in agricultural production and processing have expanded food production greatly. The trends have come at an associated cost however, namely the reliance on fossil fuels which are running out, and similarly the challenge of maintaining a substantial agriculture system in a changing climate exacerbated by the burning of the fossil fuels.

Engineers, although not farmers, often support the agricultural industry through design of technology, systems planning and supplying energy for farms. Any engineer with a global perspective on sustainability should have an understanding of the systems in place to provide society with the elements without which life would be impossible.

This chapter will begin with outlining the trends in food production over the last century, how eating habits have changed and how agriculture has adapted to cater for this change in diet for an expanding population. In concurrence with previous chapters, we will then outline the environmental and social issues associated with current farming methods, finishing with suggestions for a sustainable food production system. Also included at the end of the chapter will be case studies of food growing projects that are successfully implementing sustainable practices in food production.

## Trends in Agriculture and Associated Problems

As shown in Chapter 1, the biggest change in agriculture has been supplying food for an exponentially growing population. Primarily, this has resulted in a proportional increase in land use for agriculture. Although the production per acre has increased due to technological innovation (as will be discussed in the next section) the sheer volume of food required for a burgeoning population has put stresses on the land, and as discussed in the previous chapter, water. In many cases farmland has encroached onto natural habitats, destroying natural ecosystems. An example of this is parts of the Amazon being cut down to provide space for soya farms, which in turn feed cattle farms for the meat industry in the West.

The general paradigm in land use has been a shift from a large amount of small, family run farms dispersed evenly across the countryside, to a smaller amount of much bigger farms, employing fewer workers but achieving higher output through the use of large machinery such as tractors. This is evident in some parts of the USA, where there are colossal farms run by only a few workers. These large farms will invariably grow immense fields of one crop which can be farmed efficiently to increase output. This is known as monoculture farming and can lead to a loss in biological diversity and make crops more susceptible to disease.

There are growing concerns about whether the trends of increasing productivity per acre of land can continue while maintaining or restoring the natural resource base upon which agriculture depends. Similarly, researchers and some members of the public are increasingly worried about many of the unintended negative consequences of agricultural production—for example, the effect of agriculture on environmental quality and ecosystem functioning, the potential risks of agricultural pollutants or risks of contamination of food and water by agricultural input to human health, and the safety and nutritional content of the food produced. Some observers raise the issues of how modern agriculture affects the well-being of farming communities, farm families, farm labourers, and livestock. [see reference 1]

Advance of Technology in Agriculture

The increase in production per acre discussed above has been achieved through an advance in technological innovation, such as tractors, processing machinery, storage, refrigeration, transportation and packaging.

The majority of these innovations have only been made possible due to the increased availability of fossil fuels. A report by Feasta estimates that the energy in a kilogram of oil is equivalent to the output of about 24 working days or just under 200 hours of human work. That makes a day's human work equal to about 40 grams of oil, a couple of desert-spoons full. Another way of looking at it is that a 40 litre fill-up at a petrol station is the equivalent of about four years of human manual work [see reference 3].

Using this concept of "energy slave equivalents" it is easy to see how the agriculture system can change from many people working on the land to a relatively low labour force farming larger land areas implementing oil dependent machinery. Similarly, the processing, storage, drying and refrigeration of food produce all have an associated energy cost. The packaging of food has made it easier to transport and sell, which has increased markets and therefore income for the farmers and therefore investment to increase production. Most packaging is made from plastics which started their lives as oil.

The fossil fuel based transportation options for food has changed the availability and variety of the food we eat and has had associated social and environmental implications which will be covered in more detail in further sections. Albert Bartlett said that "Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food" [see reference 4], and in the same book Mackay estimates that we need 15kwh/day per person for our food, farming and fertilizer in the UK (although this varies for the type of diet, with meat eaters requiring the most energy and vegans the least).[see reference 4]

The impacts of using fossil fuels, including the carbon dioxide emitted and associated resource depletion have been covered in previous chapters. However it is worth pointing out here that due to agriculture's reliance on oil, as oil prices fluctuate so too do food prices. This can be seen in the recent food price increases related to the oil price increases.

The following is a comment by a farmer in the USA:

People suddenly realized that almost all of our food production methods relied on oil...The giant factory-like farms, which produce so much of our food, not only need much energy to run their equipment, but require far larger amounts to take the food they produce to processing plants and markets often located thousands of miles away. A more organic food-producing system, based largely on smaller farms located near markets, suddenly began to seem like a very practical idea. The suggestion that we might need organic methods in the future to feed ourselves and others began to be discussed as a serious possibility. [see reference 5]

Above text sourced from MERLOT under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License  
 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=557456

[   
](http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=557456)

Another technological advance worth noting here is the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops. GM is the process of gene selection for a particular trait, for example breeding a disease resistant crop. GM crops are grown extensively in the USA but not in the EU, and the global area planted with GM has increased more than 10% each year since they were introduced in 1996. There are ethical concerns about GM. GM crops are often designed to produce a toxin which will resist the insect or pest attacking it. This can also be toxic to other plants or wildlife which can decrease genetic biodiversity. There are also issues with profitability, managerial freedom and consumer safety and choice. [see reference 6]

Food Miles

At the beginning of the century, it's likely that an average weekday rural meal would consist of seasonal vegetables and grains grown by the local farmer, with some even coming from the family's back garden. The advances in transport technology, global trade and international markets has resulted in supermarkets stocking food from all over the world at any time of year. It is now possible to buy strawberries in the depth of winter, and a whole host of exotic fruit and vegetables that would be impossible to grow in the UK.

The seasonal aspect of fruits and vegetables also applies to livestock. Much of the lamb industry in the UK supplies New Zealand during lambing season here, and in return we get lamb from New Zealand when it is out of season in the UK. The energy cost of flying this commodity half way around the world is significant.

The driving force of this "anything at any time" phenomenon has been supermarkets striving to increase profits by widening the variety of produce they stock. Consumers don't question the fact that they can buy anything, from anywhere in the world, at any time of the year, or what the impacts of this luxury are on the environment.

The food miles are not just associated with transporting produce from where it is grown; produce will often travel very far for processing operations on its way to the supermarket shelf. It is not unheard of for products grown in the USA to be flown to Africa for washing or processing due to the cheap labour before being flown back for sale.

The obvious associated cost of this mass transportation of food across the globe is the energy used in transporting this food, either by plane or cargo ship and the burning of fossil fuels to achieve this aim. This adds to agriculture's reliance on fossil fuels, and exacerbates the problem of how to feed the population as fossil fuels run out.

Another social factor of the international food market is the exploitation of poorer nations providing produce such as coffee and bananas purchased in the developed North. There are inequality and justice issues when the workers producing the food item could never afford to buy what they are farming, and indeed often don't have enough money to supply their families with a basic level of nutrition. This will be discussed in more detail in a further section, and a positive movement to combat this, fair trade, will be discussed in the solution part of this chapter.

Finally, another significant problem of food miles, especially in the UK is the reduction in food security. Due to the reliance on foreign food producers the UK has a low resilience to fluctuating food and oil prices. As fossil fuels deplete a big change in growing systems must take place if the UK is to independently support its population to supply food through agriculture.

Fertilisers and Soil Fertility Depletion

Another trend in agriculture has been the increased use of chemical fertilisers in growing food. Plants require three chemical elements to grow – Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (N, P, and K). Early in the 20th century a technical innovation made it possible to obtain nitrogen from the air by putting it under large amounts of pressure. Since then nitrogen based fertilisers have been used in mainstream farming in increasing amounts. During the 1970's the so called "green revolution" occurred, when chemical fertilisers were introduced on a very large scale globally.

The added nitrogen increases yields of the soil in the short term, however over longer periods soil nutrition will be severely affected due to soil acidification. Another problem with over use of fertilisers is the leaching of Nitrates and Phosphates into rivers, causing an overgrowth of algae over the surface of the water. This process known as eutrophication causes all life in the water system, including the fish to die.

An impact of Nitrogen specifically is the significant amount of energy required to produce it. The energy will inevitable come from fossil fuels, the impacts of which (resource depletion and climate change) have been a common theme of this module. Phosphorous, although occurring naturally in the soil in small amounts, is mined and added to artificial fertilisers to boost yields. As with any mined mineral, there is a finite amount and peak phosphorous will be reached at some point in the future.

Finally, heavy metal accumulation (such as zinc from steel industry waste recycled into fertilisers) has been recorded in regions that have used fertilisers regularly, and methane emission from crop and livestock paddy fields increase with the use of nitrogen fertilisers.[see reference 6]

Change in Diet in Developed Countries

As agriculture has increased production, the type of foods consumed has also changed over the last century. Largely due to increased incomes especially in the West, the average diet has changed to incorporate more meat, more refined sugar and generally more food being eaten per person.[see reference 7]

There are specific health effects arising from this change in diet. Specifically, due to the increased consumption of refined sugars, there has been a related increase in rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. There has also been a steady increase in cancers, and some studies link this to consumption of red meat. [see reference 8]

The environmental effects of this change in diet are most notable for the increase in meat production and consumption. As we saw in the previous chapter, meat requires an order of magnitude more water per kg than vegetables, and the same is true for land use. It is true that some livestock grazing, for example sheep in mountainous regions of Wales or cattle in arid plains of Africa, is an efficient use of land, as it wouldn't be possible to grow anything there anyway.

However for the majority of cattle farming in particular this isn't the case, as large areas of land that could produce a substantially larger amount of vegetables or grain is being taken up by livestock to supply the growing meat industry. As well as land and water, there is an increased energy requirement for producing meat, and pollution effects such as effluent run off can also be severe. Other effects of large meat production have been found in the case of mad cow disease and other livestock diseases such as foot and mouth.

After energy production, livestock is the biggest source of greenhouse gases, bigger than transport. Cows produce methane which is 20 times stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and the increased number of cows bred equates to an increased release of greenhouse gases. [see reference 9]

In some cases the mass production of livestock has led to a decrease in quality of life for the animals farmed, with large dairy and livestock farms feeding animals with growth hormones and antibiotics, and cramped living conditions leading to a poor quality of life.

Sustainability is as much a social problem as it is environmental, and in this case it is clear what social impacts this change in diet has had on society.

The Role of Big Business

Another trend in food production has been the rise of big corporations owning the majority of the farms. Corporations such as Monsanto have introduced GM crops and then patented them. This means that if any farmers are found to have seeds of this patented crop on their land they can be liable for breaking the law and sued. It can be difficult for farmers to prevent the spreading of seeds onto their land when they are distributed by the wind.

Corporations have also put farmers into debt by forcing them to purchase their GM seeds which offer a big yield, but making it so they have to buy them year on year as they are "single yield" varieties. This has forced farmers into debt and there are reports of farmers in India committing suicide as they are unable to pay back the debt. [see reference 10]

According to Walsh and Woodcock : "The mainstream food system and supply chain is unfair and unsustainable. Decisions and profits are taken by a handful of large companies driving down prices and maximising profits at the expense of farmers, local communities and the environment. Our current unsustainable food system has turned us (the UK) into a nation of passive consumers in a top down system from which we expect unlimited 'choice' but over which we have little control.[see reference 11]

Global Food Inequality

Finally, as the increased production in the West and levels of obesity increase, so too have the number of people in developing countries that do not have access to adequate food supplies. One of the UN millennium development goals is to halve, between 1990 and 2015 the number of people who suffer from hunger. The UN reports that 1 in 4 children in developing countries are still underweight. [see reference 12] Recent famines in east Africa have left millions starving. As with other themes of unsustainability, everything is related; it is areas that are already suffering from poor food yields that will be worst affected by climate change (caused in part by the overproduction of food in the West) which will exacerbate the problem.

Similarly, developing countries are aspiring to Western diets because of the advertising forced by the more economically developed countries. An increase in Western farming practices on a global scale will see exponential rises in environmental, health and social problems examined earlier in this chapter.

Now watch the following talk by Mark Bittman describes what's wrong with our current food system, with a specific focus on the trends that have occurred in the USA with regards to food.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

## Sustainable Food Production

It is clear that our current food system is unsustainable, and that action must be taken to create an alternative vision and implement it. Having covered these unsustainable trends in food production and associated social and environmental problems, we will now examine what a sustainable food production might look like, before highlighting some case studies of local and global initiatives that have achieved steps in this direction.

The American Society of Agronomy provide the following definition for sustainable agriculture:

"A sustainable agriculture is one that, over the long term, enhances environmental quality and the resource base on which agriculture depends; provides for basic human food and fibre needs; is economically viable; and enhances the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole."

The Kindling Trust have produced a short film, "What is Sustainable Food?", which explains the various elements society needs to consider in building a sustainable food system. Over 10 minutes, the film runs through eight principles, which are also discussed in the report "Sustainable Fayre" , published by Kindling:

1. Local and seasonal.

Food now travels further than ever before with money leaking from local economies. Local and seasonal food offers a way to minimise energy use in transportation and storage, increase freshness and quality, strengthen local distinctiveness and build more resilient communities, whilst supporting local food outlets and farmers.

2. Organic and sustainable farming.

Organic and low-carbon farming avoids artificial fertilisers and genetically modified organisms, while maximising crop diversity. This encourages biodiversity, and offers a long-term investment in soil fertility for future food production, as well as countering climate change through soil carbon sequestration.

3. Reduction of waste and packaging.

Approximately 70% of primary packaging is used for food and drink which becomes contaminated by residues of the original contents, making it difficult to recycle. Purchasing local and seasonal food reduces the need for unnecessary packaging, minimising the negative impact on the environment from the current large scale disposal of inorganic waste.

4. Reducing foods of animal origin and maximise welfare standards.

Meat and dairy products are among the most energy and greenhouse-gas intensive food products of all.

5. Excludes fish species identified as at risk.

Overfishing is the greatest single threat to marine wildlife and habitats, with nearly 80% of world fish stocks fully or overexploited.

6. Fairtrade-certified products.

Fairtrade ensures producers are paid fairly for their work, offering a strategy for poverty alleviation and sustainable development. It creates social and economic opportunities for producers and workers who have been exploited, disadvantaged or marginalised by the conventional trading system.

7. Promote health and wellbeing.

A sustainable food system is about health and wellbeing for all – individually, locally and globally. This includes tacking both childhood obesity and malnutrition.

8. Food democracy.

Food democracy is about reconnecting people to food and taking responsibility for it, ensuring control by and fairness among local producers, suppliers and consumers, and working to reduce inequality in the food supply chain."

The documentary also showcases some of Manchester's leading sustainable food projects including: Abundance Manchester, Glebelands City growers, Unicorn Grocery, Fairfield Materials Management and Wild at Heart. Generally, the video provides an excellent overview of the importance of food sustainability from the UK perspective. Please view the video here: http://kindling.org.uk/what-sustainable-food.

(Source for Section 5.2 Gosling [see reference 12])

Case Studies

Eco works

Eco works is a community organisation with the interests of people and the environment at its heart. Ecoworks exists to promote the interests and personal development of people who are socially disadvantaged by delivering activities connected with the conservation, restoration and enhancement of the environment. Ecoworks manage two site (27 gardens in total) St. Ann's, Nottingham and a 13-acre permaculture site on the urban fringe of Nottingham.

Ecoworks Community Gardens are based on 10 gardens on the Hungerhill allotment site. We have been on the site for fifteen years and are the oldest community garden in Nottingham. We grow a wide range of fruit and vegetables but also provide a space that is beautiful and relaxing.

The FRESH Project Market Gardens and Education Centre is a community food project offering educational opportunities on St Ann's Allotments in Nottingham City.

FRESH represents:

FOOD – helping local people to a healthier lifestyle through the growing, harvesting, preparation and consumption of chemical-free fruit and vegetables.

REGENERATION – of the local community, its economy and environment, and of the historic St Ann's Allotments.

EDUCATION – through training in sustainable horticulture, volunteer opportunities and open community events

SUSTAINABILITY– producing food in a way that preserves and enhances the environment.

HEALTH – our chemical-free fruit and vegetables are sold to cafes and we operate a seasonal veg box scheme. 50 present of our produce is subsidized and made available to disadvantaged families and individuals as well as community groups predominantly within a two miles radius of our gardens.

More info: www.ecoworks.org.uk

## Further Reading

Online Teaching Resources

Sustainability and food security – video lecture

http://ocw.uci.edu/lectures/lecture.aspx?id=183

TED talk about growing your own vegetables

 http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_doiron_my_subversive_garden_plot.html

Organic Gardening

 http://www.oercommons.org/courses/teaching-organic-farming-gardening/view

Permaculture, Peak Oil, Climate Change and the Soul of the World - ANIMA MUNDI official trailer 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z-fRQayrUk

[  
](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z-fRQayrUk)

Web Resources

 The state of the world's land and water resources for food and agriculture (SOLAW) - Managing systems at risk. Summary Report. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome and Earth scan, London.

Available:  http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch07/ch07-p06.asp

Footprint of food, Allianz

 http://knowledge.allianz.com/?749/environmental-impact-footprint-food-life-cycle

Veggies, a Nottingham Vegan Catering Campaign

http://www.veggies.org.uk/

## References

1. National Research Council, Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century,  http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12832&page=1  
Accessed on 14th March 2012

2. Nutrition, Inequality and Agriculture: Contested Models of Degenerative Disease in Chiapas, Mexico, Ronald Nigh, CIESAS-Sureste

 http://www.oercommons.org/courses/nutrition-inequality-and-agriculture-contested-models-of-degenerative-disease-in-chiapas-mexico/view  
Accessed on 16th March 2012

3. THE GREAT EMISSIONS RIGHTS GIVE AWAY, Feasta (Foundations for the Economics of Sustainability  http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/emissions2007.htm Accessed on 15th March 2012

4. David J.C. Mackay. Sustainable energy – without the hot air. UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3 Available free online from www.withouthotair.com

5. Land & Power Sustainable Agriculture and African Americans

A collection of essays from the 2007 Black Environmental Thought conference edited by Jeffrey L. Jordan Edward Pennick Walter A. Hill Robert Zabawa Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE)  
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=557456 Accessed 16th March 2012

6. Mepham, B. bioethics an introduction for the biosciences, Oxford University Press, New York 2008 ISBN 978-0-19-921430-3

7. Josef Schmidhuber and Prakash Shetty, The nutrition transition to 2030 - Why developing countries are likely to bear the major burden.

 http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fao.org%2Ffileadmin%2Ftemplates%2Fesa%2FGlobal_persepctives%2FLong_term_papers%2FJSPStransition.pdf&ei=zd5xT7TZPKKo0QW_rP3_Dw&usg=AFQjCNFnUdOP8d3yE91vqXHZMGIbAmkCQQ&sig2=U-qL-OGWEvQi6K1S1mwnfg  
Accessed 17th March 2012

8. Hawkesworth, S et al. Feeding the world healthily: the challenge of measuring the effects of agriculture on health. Philosophical transactions of the royal society of biological sciences, September 2010  
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1554/3083.full Accessed 17th March 2012

9.  http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

10. Ethan, A, Monsanto connected to at least 200,000 suicides in India throughout past decade (2004) Available online: http://www.naturalnews.com/030913_Monsanto_suicides.html Accessed 5th May 2012

11. http://kindling.org.uk/what-sustainable-food

12. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml

13. Gosling, Simon Sustainability the geography perspective, Food and Agriculture (reference to come when published)
Chapter 6: Buildings

We have looked at how engineers currently provide the essentials for life to society; specifically water and food, and the implications for sustainability in each. The final necessity of humankind is the infrastructure to be protected from the elements, a roof over our heads. The construction industry is one of the biggest consumers of energy and natural resources, as well as one of the biggest polluters. The trend in buildings has been away from long life design characterised in the UK by brick built Victorian building still sturdy after 100 years to quick and cheap concrete steel and glass designs, which not only have a high embodied energy, but decay relatively quickly.

Some facts about the construction industry:

  * A large proportion of the global GNP is spent on buildings

  * Construction and operation of buildings consumes over a third of the worlds energy and 40% of the worlds mined resources [see reference 1]

In the UK Buildings are also responsible for:

• almost half of UK carbon emissions,

• half of water consumption,

• about one third of landfill waste and 13% of all raw materials used in UK economy [see reference 2]

• Buildings account for some 52% of total energy use in the UK [see reference3],[see reference 4].

In the USA buildings contribute to:

• 30% of raw materials use

• 30% of waste output (136 million tons/year)

• 12% of potable water consumption [see reference 5]

There is considerable scope for affecting these national statistics by a combination of careful design, procurement, alteration, refurbishment, replacement, use, commissioning and maintenance of new and existing buildings used for whatever purpose. see reference [6]

This chapter will examine the impact of the construction industry on the environment; the land, energy, water and material resources it requires and the problems arising from their use. We will then examine sustainable building practices, what we can do to reduce the footprint of buildings, manage waste during their construction, how to design for less energy use over their lifetime, and the options of reducing the energy consumption of existing buildings, known as "retro-fitting". Finally we will look at current legislation in place in the UK related to sustainable construction practices, before examining some case studies of sustainable building projects.

## Environmental Impacts of Buildings

The concept of Life Cycle Analysis was introduced in Chapter 3. Figure 6.1.1 looks at the Life Cycle Analysis of a building, including the inputs and outputs of the various stages of the materials used for building's life cycle

Figure 6.1.1 LCA of a building

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We will now examine these steps individually, firstly looking at the environmental impact of materials, the waste produced during construction, the energy use during the lifetime of the building and finally demolition.

## Environmental Impact of Construction Materials

Building and construction activities worldwide consume 3 billion tonnes of raw materials each year, which is 40% of total global use. The UK's annual construction output requires 170 million tonnes of primary materials and products, 125 million tonnes of quarry products and 70 million tonnes of secondary recycled and reclaimed products. To manufacture and deliver these products, 6 million tonnes of energy are consumed and 23 million tonnes of C02 are emitted [see reference 2]. The main materials used in construction are steel and concrete, both of which have a high embodied energy.

The choice of materials and building elements for any building will mainly be made on the basis of thermal properties, structural properties and cost. As well as the energy implications of the materials, other factors to be considered include:

  * the implications of mineral extraction to derive the basic product

  * the pollution and energy consequences of the manufacturing/production process

  * toxicity of product and chemicals etc. used in manufacturing process e.g. global warming potential/ozone depletion potential

  * waste issues at all stages of the production and construction processes

  * distribution/transport issues

  * life-cycle and recycling options at the end of its expected life

One measure often used to measure environmental impact is embodied energy. A number of Green Guides have been produced that include the above issues and attempt to provide some weighting on the likely impact of all the above [see reference 6].

## Construction Waste

In the UK approximately 13% of material delivered to a construction site go the skip without being used. Annually, the UK produces around 400million tonnes of waste of which 72 million come from the construction industry, this is equivalent to about 1.45 tonnes for every person in the UK. In the USA by comparison, about 24% of solid landfill waste is generated by the construction industry. Up to 95% of construction waste is recyclable, and most is clean and unmixed. [see reference 5]

Above text sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm

Figure 6.2.1 Types of construction waste [see reference 7]

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The figure above demonstrates that the majority of construction waste is concrete. Not only is this very difficult to recycle (apart from as aggregate for more concrete) it also has a very high embodied energy.

## Operating Energy for Buildings

As well as the embodied energy contained in the materials of a building, and that of the processes used to construct a building, the main environmental impact will be the energy used during its lifetime. The figure below shows different scenarios of energy use over a lifetime of a building compared to the embodied energy

Figure 6.4.1 Operating Energy of Buildings [see reference 5]

Figure 6.4.1 sourced from MIT opencourseware under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License[  
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm](http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/39134/1-964Fall-2004/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-964Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm)

According to the US Department of Energy, in the USA buildings account for 37% of primary energy consumption, and 65% of electricity use. This is the biggest use, followed by industry which is 36% and transportation which is 27%. This energy use by building accounts for 30% of greenhouse gases. [see reference 5]

Energy is used in buildings for heating, ventilation, lighting and electrical appliances used within the building. The majority of the energy use is for space heating; in fact 4-7% of a developed nation's energy consumption is due to heat losses from domestic windows alone. In EC countries, at least one quarter of the domestic heating bill is due to the thermal energy loss through windows because they are the weakest thermal component in the exterior envelope. [see reference 5]

Some of this energy can be reduced through behavioural changes conducted by the residents of the buildings, such as turning the heating down, switching off lights when not in rooms, or turning electrical devices off when not in use. However a larger amount can be reduced through effective design of the building to make use of natural resources such as solar energy and effective insulation, which will be covered in the next section.

Having briefly covered the main negative implications of the construction industry, we will now examine sustainable alternatives.

## Sustainable Buildings Strategy

Building Research Establishment (BRE 2002) published a guide to assist developers when identifying sustainability issues, which include:

  * Land Use, Urban Form and Design

  * Transport

  * Energy

  * Impact of individual buildings

  * Natural resources

  * Ecology

  * Community

  * Business

Above text sourced from ORBEE under a Creative Commons Licences Attribution-Non Commecial-Share Alike  
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It is clear that buildings impact a range of societal factors in their construction and use. The area of green architecture is a growing industry and a larger subject to be covered in its entirety than can be included in this chapter. We will focus on certain aspects of green building.

Firstly we will look at designing environmental sustainable buildings by reducing their embodied energy in the materials used for construction, and designing for low energy use during their lifetime. Next we will examine how to reduce waste during the construction process. Finally we will explore the concept of "retrofitting" existing housing stock, that is making alterations to existing high energy use houses, and whether there is a limit to how much you can do before it becomes more feasible to knock it down and start again. Also included at the end of this section are case studies of examples of sustainable buildings.

## Sustainable Design – Material Choice

Impacts of material use outlined can be reduced in the following ways:

Design for less material use – optimising geometries can reduce the total amount of steel or concrete for example used in the building.

Source local – Purchasing materials manufactured locally will avoiding high energy costs associated with transportation. As always cost will be the limiting factor, making it cheaper in the UK to get the steel from china than from Sheffield.

Use green building materials – Innovative building designs make use of natural materials such as timber, clay, or straw bales. Not only do these materials have a very low embodied energy, they often have good insulation values. Examples of such building are listed in the further reading section. Also, using recyclable materials will increase the sustainability of a building project.

Figure 6.6.1 Principals and result of building with straw bales [see reference 8]

Figure 6.6.1 sourced from Simon Dale.net under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License  
http://www.simondale.net/house/straw.htm

Responsible Sourcing - For materials such as timber, a consideration should be made as to where the wood came from, and whether it is being replaced at a rate equal or more than that which it is being extracts. Responsible sourcing is demonstrated through auditable third party certification schemes, for example the sustainable forestry initiative or the FSC.

## Water Use

Water stress and problems with water have been highlighted in chapter 4. Careful building design can help to save water and use the precious resource sparingly. Water saving measures are displayed below, they include garden water butts, underground rainwater harvesting tank, the use of grey water systems, dual flush systems in toilets and reducing drips and leaks.

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## Design for Low Energy Use

In domestic buildings total energy use can be broken down into consumption for space heating, water heating, cooking, lighting and small appliances. The largest element of this energy use is for space heating purposes. A typical breakdown is illustrated in table 6.7.1. The percentage figures for consumption and for CO2 differ because the majority of energy use for space-heating purposes in the domestic sector is for gas whilst the remaining consumption is by grid-produced electricity.

Table 6.8.1 – Domestic Energy Use

Although relatively small in absolute terms the consumption of electricity for appliances has changed dramatically in recent years with the increased use of consumer goods in most households. Table 6.7.2 shows the breakdown of consumption in each of a number of categories.

Although relatively small in absolute terms the consumption of electricity for appliances has changed dramatically in recent years with the increased use of consumer goods in most households. Table 6.7.2 shows the breakdown of consumption in each of a number of categories.

Table 6.8.2 – Electrical Consumption of Household Appliances

In order to provide low energy buildings the potential energy losses from a building need to be minimized and the potential gains to a building – such as that from solar radiation – need to be maximized. It is also essential that appliances and building services elements such as boilers and water heaters are as efficient as possible and controls are provided to support these aims and to facilitate and ensure user satisfaction.

Heat Losses

Heat can be lost from a building through the external fabric and these losses can be reduced by thermal insulation in any part of the external elements – the roof, the walls or the floor. Most common building materials have thermal resistance properties due to their porosity and the consequent presence of air in the pores. Most elements are multi-layered and therefore have thermal resistance due to air cavities between layers. Technically the thermal transmittance of any element is represented by its 'U' value, measured in Watts/m2ºC (a low U-value indicating better thermal resistance). A good low energy design necessitates a consideration of the relative areas and U-values of all the external building elements in a building in order to minimize fabric losses.

Pitched roofs can be simply insulated by means of glass fibre or mineral wool quilt laid between and over ceiling joists. An acceptable U-value for the roof of a property constructed in 2006 would be of the order of 0.25 W/m2ºC and that would require a depth of approximately 300mm of insulation quilt in the roof space.

External walls are typically multi-layered and can be insulated in a number of ways, between the layers or by the substituting of relatively poor insulators with materials of higher thermal resistance. In traditional masonry construction the internal blockwork may have to be lightweight and the cavity may have to be fully filled in order to achieve a reasonable U-value. Perhaps the most straightforward method is to change the method of construction and to use a timber frame solution with a heavily insulated internal timber frame and a brickwork external leaf. The U-value for a wall should be a maximum of 0.35 W/m2ºC.

Floors may take one of two forms – solid or suspended timber. Solid concrete floors can be insulated below the slab, using a non-compressible insulant, and depending on the construction detail, additionally beneath the floor finish. Suspended floors can be insulated between the timber joists with the insulation, such as glass fibre or mineral wool, supported by netting draped over the joists. A target U-value for a floor would be a maximum of 0.25 W/m2ºC.

Windows are traditionally the largest thermal bridge in the external envelope of a building with older properties having single glazed windows with timber frames and poor draught-proofing. To reduce heat losses through doors and windows requires double or triple glazed elements, as is common in Scandinavian countries, as well as seals for opening lights and thermal breaks in the surrounding frames. Traditional windows have a U-value of approximately 5.7 W/m2ºC and this can be improved to less than 2.0 by careful design and specification.

Heat is also lost by means of ventilation and infiltration. 'Ventilation' is the controlled removal of pollutant-laden air and its replacement by fresh air. In a domestic situation ventilation can be natural, through windows, chimneys, flues and the like or mechanical, by means of extract fans. 'Infiltration' is the uncontrolled movement of air in a building. It can arise though gaps in the building fabric, which may seem insignificant but may account for up to 50% of the heat loss from a house.

#

Heat Gains

Adventitious or 'free' heating to a building is to be encouraged and utilized as long as it does not lead to overheating and the consequent need for cooling. Heat gains are obtained from a number of sources – occupants themselves, any electrical consumption such as for water heating, cooking, lighting and small appliances and from solar gain. It is the latter that can be the most beneficial in overall energy terms. A design that best utilizes solar radiation to supplement or replace space heating demand is termed 'passive' solar design – the term 'active' solar design is generally reserved for systems for water heating or photovoltaics.

Passive solar design takes into account site factors such as orientation and layout and the relationship of one house to another adjoining house in order to avoid overshadowing. It also requires a particular consideration of glazed areas and the correct sizing and balance of glazing according to orientation and room use. Selection of glazing types and shading and the use of thermal mass in a building are also necessary in order to reduce the likelihood of overheating. Glazed building elements – windows in domestic properties and curtain walling in commercial properties – provide the best opportunities for maximum solar gains but conversely are the worst thermal insulators. It is necessary to consider the net balance of energy through such elements on a month-by-month basis, particularly to determine likely heating loads across the season and to avoid excessive summer temperatures.

Building Services

Modern heating systems comprise a primary heat producing unit – a boiler – and a distribution network, comprising pipework and heat emitters such as radiators. In domestic installations the system is designed and sized simply to provide sufficient heat even in the depths of winter. The system generally provides heating only; there is no requirement for cooling or for ventilation.

Boilers may use a variety of fuel types, including mains gas, oil (kerosene or gas oil) or bulk LPG (butane or propane). Independent boilers can also be fueled by coal, anthracite or wood. The key consideration is the design of the heating system in order to operate at optimum load conditions and, linked to this, the selection of a boiler with high seasonal efficiency. Information on boiler efficiencies can be obtained from manufacturers or, in the UK, from the SEDBUK (Seasonal Efficiency of Domestic Boilers, UK) website.

Condensing boilers are generally more efficient boilers, designed to utilize the latent heat released by the condensation of water vapour in the combustion flue products.

Water heating may be provided by the main heating system or it may be supplied using an independent water heating system – such as an immersion heater in a hot water storage cylinder. Some boilers in domestic use in the UK are combination or 'combi' boilers, which have the capacity to provide domestic hot water directly, in some cases containing an internal hot water store.

Heating systems may be controlled in a number of ways. In the simplest systems a room thermostat is used. This is a sensing device that measures the air temperature within the building or in different rooms and switches the space heating system on or off. Systems may also incorporate a time clock enabling a user to choose one or more 'on' periods in a daily or weekly cycle. The most sophisticated systems will have a variety of controls, including for example, thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) for each radiator, an external thermostat for weather compensation, a boiler thermostat and a programmer. These may all be brought together in a boiler energy manager system.

Renewable Energy

At the scale of an individual building it is possible to employ a number of technologies to generate energy locally, collectively known as 'micro-generation'. Options for renewable connected to a domestic building are listed in table 6.8.1

For a comprehensive overview of the technology as installed see the Energy Saving Trust report published in September 2010.

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Media/node_1422/Getting-warmer-a-field-trial-of-heat-pumps-

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## Waste Management

As outlined in chapter 3, dealing with waste follows a hierarchy starting with the most important measures to reduce, followed by reuse to finally recycle.

Figure 6.9.1 The waste hierarchy for construction materials [see reference 7]

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Reduce

The best way of dealing with waste is reducing the amount you create in the first place. This action is often neglected in terms of waste management, but it is by far the most important. The following are methods of waste reduction:

Design specification – This will be most effective in the planning stages of the project. A lot of waste is created by cutting materials on site to fit a complicated design. This waste can be reduced by considering waste when designing the project – designing dimensions to fit available material lengths, simplifying the design and giving thought to the construction type and method.

Material Procurement and Logistics – Construction waste arises from inaccurate material orders, changes to the design midway through the project, or poor storage of materials from badly planned logistics. Generally, material costs have a lower priority than labour costs so aren't given as much consideration; this shouldn't be the case as material wastage has a high environmental as well as economic impact. Effective logistical planning can reduce these problems.

Off-Site Manufacturing - Ordering parts of the project to be built off site before delivery can significantly reduce on-site waste. Examples of this include: pre-cast concrete, light steel frame construction and timber framing. The use of timber frame construction has the potential to reduce on site wastage by 40% compared to traditional construction (source: WRAP).

Reduce Packaging – The construction industry has the highest waste arising from packaging in all industry sectors. The site manager can reduce this impact by choosing materials that have less packaging, buying in bulk and recycling packaging wherever possible.

Reuse

There are many situations when materials can be re-used in their raw form. Re-using materials doesn't require energy, so is preferable to recycling. The key is to store materials in good condition on site. Keep on good terms with the builders merchants so you can return goods for cash.

Raw materials that can be reclaimed include timber, tiles and bricks. Sometimes packaging such as crates can be re-used or returned to the supplier. If you don't need the surplus materials maybe somebody else does. The project manager must consider:

  * What materials can be re-used within their project?

  * What wasted materials from their project could be re-used elsewhere?

Therefore they must have knowledge of where to obtain second hand materials (e.g. reclaimed timber yards), as well as where to take their unwanted reusable materials.

Examples of reusing materials:

  * Topsoil can be reclaimed and re-used for landscaping or as compost once all the necessary tests (for physical properties, chemical composition and moisture content) have been carried out.

  * Bricks (e.g. from an old Victorian house) that are still structurally sound can be reused in certain types of construction and can sometimes fetch a high resale price.Reclaimed timber can often be used for an assortment of jobs.

Recycle

Many materials can be either recycled on site or sent away to be recycled. . An example of on-site recycling is breaking up old concrete or rubble to use as aggregate or hardcore. The key to making waste ready to be recycled is segregation: the on-site sorting of materials before collection for recycling. The following are examples of labels that can be used for bins on site to sort waste:

There are online databases which list all the recycling facilities near the construction site. It will be the job of the site manager to contact these recycling companies and secure pick up and transportation of the separated waste from site to be recycled.

Below are some links to examples of such databases:

Wood: www.recyclewood.org.uk

Glass: www.recycleglass.org.uk

Plasterboard: http://www.wrap.org.uk/construction/plasterboard/plasterboard_4.html

Aggregates: http://www.aggregain.org.uk/supplier_directory/index.html

## Retrofit Existing Building Stock

Using the suggestions above when designing new houses can make a big difference in reducing the environmental impact of the construction industry. However, new buildings account for a very small percentage of energy costs in developed countries. With this in mind, considerations must be made to the existing housing stock, and what can be done to reduce the environmental impact of these buildings.

Many of the building in the UK were constructed during the Victorian period, during which architects employed successful methods for solid, long life buildings, but not with scarce energy resources or sustainability factors in mind. In fact, coal was the main energy source so many buildings were designed to be heated with a coal burner in each room. Also very little insulation was employed, as the plentiful supply of coal didn't require energy saving measures. As a result, many of these old building are under-insulated, and waste a huge amount of energy. Measures to reduce the impact of these old buildings are known as "retro-fitting" and are outlined below.

Draft Proofing

Heat is lost through draughty windows and other gaps in the building envelope. Stopping these leaks will keep the heat inside the house and reduce the energy needed to keep it warm. Installing double glazing (or secondary glazing) is one measure to achieve this, as windows are where the greatest amount of heat is lost. However one must weigh up the insulation benefits of the double glazing to the embodied energy and toxicity of UPVC which is used to make the window frames.

Insulation

Heat is lost through solid walls. This can be reduced by adding insulation to the existing walls. Internal insulation can be mounted onto interior walls, but will reduce the overall space. External insulation is a possibility, where insulating panels are mounted to external walls. In houses that have an inner and outer wall in the building envelope, cavity wall insulation can be put in, which involves pumping insulating material into the gaps between the two walls. Loft insulation prevents heat loss through the roof. There are many government schemes to encourage people to save energy by insulating their homes.

Heating System Upgrade

Often the most cost effective solution can be to replace the heating system with an efficient boiler or thermostat, which will reduce the gas used to heat the house by increasing heating efficiency.

The cost and embodied energy of retrofitting must be weighed in with cost and energy savings resulting in their implementation. Some argue that there is only so much that can be done with the existing housing stock, and a more successful tactic would be to knock them down and start again.

Many measures such as putting up thick curtains, turning down the thermostat and wearing warm jumpers can be employed by residents of domestic properties to reduce their houses energy use.

Now watch the following 20 minute video about green buildings, which introduces more green building techniques such as green roofs, integrated PV windows, permeable paving, bamboo flooring, aerated concrete blocks, and insulation innovations.

http://webpages.uidaho.edu/sustainability/chapters/ch04/ch04-p03.asp

##  Legislation

In the UK the system of control on the design of all new domestic properties is covered by the Building Regulations [see reference 9]. New, more onerous standards came into force in 2006 requiring an overall reduction in energy consumption of some 28% on previous standards. The regulations require target U-values for building elements. UK Houses now require pressure-testing to ensure that heat losses through infiltration have been kept to an acceptable level and that the house has been constructed to the same standard to which it was designed.

The method of demonstrating compliance with the new regulations is by means of a simple building energy model (a Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) calculation [see reference 10]) that provides maximum target energy consumption measured in kWh/m2/per annum and CO2 emissions per m2 per annum.

The system is intended to be relatively easy for the consumer to understand resulting in a band of values ranging from 0 to 100 with 100 being the most energy efficient. Building energy certificates are required to be displayed from 2007, based on the SAP calculations and in accordance with the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive [see reference 11]. These are likely to be along similar lines to those already adopted for domestic appliances such as fridges and freezers – a band from G through to A with A being the most energy efficient.

The Feed in Tariffs (Fit) is a renewable energy subsidy announced in 2010. The feed in tariff aimed particularly at PV and wind turbines provide a strong financial incentive to install renewable technologies. At the domestic level for example energy suppliers will pay 43p (reduced in March 2012 to 23p) per kW for renewable electricity from a domestic PV installation whilst the going rate for grid electricity is 13p. This generous subsidy, based on the German model, is aimed at stimulating supply and generating economies of scale. At the time of writing (spring 2012), the FiT has stimulated a scramble for domestic and commercial PV installations, and is soon to be reduced again.

## Case Studies

The following are case studies of building projects that have used the sustainable practices outlined above. Obviously not all of the methods used in some of the examples would be suitable on a mass scale, but sustainability is about a mix of solutions and each listed here provide an inspiration for ideas.

The Brighton Earthship

http://www.lowcarbon.co.uk/earthship-brighton

A low impact dwelling incorporating straw bale, waste materials, and passive solar design.

Beddington Zero Energy Project

A housing complex in London that is run entirely on renewable energy and employs many measures to encourage a sustainable lifestyle for residents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BedZED

Lammas

An eco-village community of families living in self built low impact houses, all of which employ natural building materials

http://www.lammas.org.uk/

Nottingham University Low Energy Building

The school of the built environment at Nottingham University has designed and built several low energy building on the University Park campus

http://www.energy.nottingham.ac.uk/Energy-Research/Low-Energy-Buildings.html

## Summary

The construction industry worldwide is one of the biggest polluters and resource consumers. It is a sector that invites a huge amount of financial investment, and employs a large number of people. Everybody on the earth requires a place to live, and the construction industry strives to provide this service.

Currently, materials used in construction are being consumed at an unsustainable rate, the energy used for creating the materials is having detrimental effects on the environment and the fossil fuels used to create this energy are running out. The large amounts of waste created by the construction industry is affecting ecosystems and taking up space in landfill. Energy used during the lifetime of a building is greater than that used during its construction, and has associated problems.

Measures can be taken to reduce the impacts of building, firstly by designing them to make use of natural or recyclable materials, optimising natural gains and minimising energy use during their lifetime by reducing heat loss, installing water saving devices, and employing renewable energy devices. Waste during construction can be reduced by initiating a waste management plan implementing the waste hierarchy of reduce, re-use recycle.

The green building industry is growing fast, as legislation is forcing architects to design for sustainable construction, and the problems with traditional building techniques are becoming apparent. A re-think of our methods for inhabitation is required to sustainably house the worlds growing population.

## Further Reading

Open Resources in Built Environment Education

http://www.orbee.org/

Passivhaus – energy performance standards for buildings

http://www.passivhaus.org.uk/

UK Timber Frame Association – building with wood

http://uktfa.com/

Straw Bale Buildings  http://www.strawbale-building.co.uk

The Centre for Alternative Technology offer a masters in Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies, which has a focus on sustainable building practices

 http://gse.cat.org.uk/msc-architecture-advanced-environmental-and-energy-studies

##  References

1. Straube, J., (2005) Green Building and Sustainability Building Science Digest 005

2. DBERR (2007) Draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction London, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

3. H M Government, Our energy future – creating a low carbon economy, Cm 5761, Department of Trade and Industry, The Stationery Office, London, 2003.

4. H M Government, The Energy Challenge – Energy Review Report 2006, Cm 6887, Department of Trade and Industry, The Stationery Office, London, 2006.

5. Ochsendorf, J. Sustainable Design: The role of the construction industry

available at  http://ebookbrowse.com/lec2-construction-pdf-d97453363 Accessed 14th March

6. Holmes, J. and Capper, G., LOW CARBON DESIGN, Northumbria University  http://www.orbee.org/teaching-learning-resources.html?view=oerareas&expand=3%3A25 Accessed 21st March

7.Bradley, J. Sutainable construction,

 http://www.orbee.org/teaching-learning-resources.html?view=oerareas&expand=3%3A25 Accessed 21st March

8. Dale, S. Building with Straw Bale, http://www.simondale.net/house/straw.htm Accessed 21st March

9.B building Regulations 2000, Approved document L1A – Conservation of fuel and power in new dwellings, RIBA Bookshops, London, 2006.

10. The Government's Standard Assessment Procedure for Energy Rating of Dwellings, 2005 Edition, Defray, 2005.

11. European P

Parliament and Council Directive 2002/91/EC: Energy Performance of Buildings  
Holmes, J. and Capper, G., LOW CARBON DESIGN, Northumbria University   http://www.orbee.org/teaching-learning-resources.html?view=oerareas&expand=3%3A25
Chapter 7: Social Dimensions of Sustainability and Engineering

So far the focus of this module has been on the environmental impacts of human progress, and the sustainability issued raised by them. However, it is important to be reminded that an engineer's duty foremost is to society, and that engineers can have a part to play in working towards solutions to social as well as environmental problems. This chapter will firstly outline social issues firstly related to inequality between nations within the world, and the associated problems arising from these such as poverty in less economically developed countries. It will then explore social issues facing more economically developed countries, before looking at the links between the two and how globalisation has had a part to play. Links between climate change, poverty, globalisation and engineering will then be outlined, before finally looking at suggestions for how engineering can assist in progressing social issues towards a more sustainable future.

'Our collective challenge – governments, the private sector, humanitarian organizations, civil society groups and others – is to remedy a gross violation of the most basic rights – to clean water, adequate food, basic health care – that currently leads to millions of children and women dying annually from easily preventable causes. This is a moral imperative. Every child who dies in extreme poverty represents an unacceptable loss of human potential.'

Dean Hirsch, 2008, the President of World Vision International [see reference 2]

above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/international-development/international-studies/will-the-poor-be-always-us

## Inequality and Poverty

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin - Charles Darwin [see reference 5]

The Bruntland report's definition of sustainability "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future" [see reference 6] implies intergenerational equality, and this concept of equality can therefore be applied to society in the present generation. Using equality as a measure of sustainability therefore, it can be observed through the following figures that socially we are far from achieving a sustainable system.

The figure below shows a world map and highlights the percentage of people living on less than 1.25 dollars per day.

The figure of 1.25 dollar is used by the UN as an economic line under which people are described as living in poverty. The map shows a huge divide over the world, with most of Africa living in poverty and most of the "developed North" having poverty levels of under 2%.

Limited access to money usually implies people living in poverty do not have access to basic water and sanitation facilities, low nutrition levels, lack of access to education and a very poor quality of life. The amount of people living without these basic facilities for life is alarming compared with the luxuries and excesses enjoyed by the majority of the populations in more economically developed countries.

Another way of looking at the divide is comparing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (how wealthy a nations is) and their average life expectancy, which is a rough measure of the health of a nation. This is displayed in the figure below and again the spread is remarkable.

Figure 7.1.2

Figure 7.1.2 is not clearly visible on a Kindle device due to resizing issues. If you wish to view this figure, please visit the link below.

 http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/gapminder-world-map

It can be seen that an increase in wealth is generally followed by an increase in health, but the primary observation from the figure is the wide distribution throughout the nations of the world. With this level of inequality currently society is a long way off from being called "sustainable".

GDP is a measure of how much money a nation spends, but is not necessarily a measure of the countries wealth, as it will include money spent on hospitals, policing, pollution control and weapons. An increase in car crashes, violent crime, cleaning up an oil spill or going to war will all increase a countries GDP, but does not represent a better quality of life.

Exercise

Go to http://www.gapminder.org/world and view the graph "health and wealth of nations" which shows how these figures for GDP and life expectancy have changed over time. There are several datasets which you can view, including poverty rates, access to water, HIV rates and de-forestry. It is in an interesting depiction of world statistics and shows clearly the lack of equity present in the world.

The next figure tackles a similar concept but instead of GDP looks at the ecological footprint, and instead of life expectancy looks at the Human Development Index (HDI). The ecological footprint is a concept introduced in the first chapter of this module, and is measure of resource consumption in terms of land use measured in hectares per person required for that lifestyle. It is a way of picturing whether a consumption rate is sustainable in terms of number of planets needed if everybody on the earth had the same level of consumption. Marked on the graph is the red line for 1 planet, or 2.1 hectares per person.

The Human Development Index was devised by the UNDP in an attempt to a find a better quantifier of quality of life; it takes into account life expectancy, literacy, education and standards of living.

It can be seen that a relatively high measure of human welfare can be obtained with a comparatively small ecological footprint (e.g Cuba). After this point consuming more resources does not improve your quality of life by a large amount. Another important observation to take from this graph, apart from the spread between the countries, is the number of countries currently consuming more than the Earth's carrying capacity, and the degree to which this limit has been surpassed in the case of the most resource hungry nations (e.g. USA).

The inequalities are linked; poor nations are often poor because they have been exploited by the richer nations; and international trade rules exist to perpetuate this system: by making money in one part of the world you are taking money from another. A game of consolidation of power through capitalism is in progress where generally the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Now read the following extract from a blog post by Richard Skellington which highlights the disparities between the rich and poor:

In times like these the words of 2006 Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus ring true:

'poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built and feel so proud of, which created poverty for them. Two months ago the World Bank warned that the world's poor were far greater in numbers than they first estimated. The Bank shifted the poverty line from a dollar a day to a dollar twenty five cents. It is amazing what adding a 'quarter' does to the projections: a mere 25 cents plunges a further 500 million people in the developing world into poverty. Thus it was that the World Bank's new estimate of its poor rose in August from 985 million people to 1.4 billion people. This new estimate does not take into account the recent increases in food and fuel prices.

In early October, when Dick Fuld the chief executive of Lehman Brothers - the investment bank whose collapse did so much to trigger the crisis in world financial systems - was quizzed by Congressional leaders, he did not spare a thought for those billion people living in the world today on around a dollar a day. No. He talked about his compensation package. Defending accusations of a $500 million dollar pay off he contested its size: "The $500m number is not accurate, although it is still a large number," he told an angry Congress hearing. Wait a minute, 500 million dollars! That is one dollar for every human being in the developing world who have now been added to the poverty index.

Given the increase in world population, the rate of world poverty has fallen substantially from 50% to 25% over the past 25 years. But the number of people in poverty has increased. In Africa, between 1981 and 2005, the number of people in poverty rose from 200 million to 380 million, with the average poor person living on around 70 cents a day.

Unlike other regions of the world, the rate of African poverty has remained the same, around 50% of the continent's population remained in poverty in 2005, compared to 1981. In Asia, however, the rate of poverty has fallen since 1981, from 60% to 40%.

Asia is home to 595 million people living in poverty; 455 million of its poor live in India. In China, poverty has fallen dramatically, from 835 million in 1981 to 207 million people in 2005. Its rate of poverty fell massively from 85%to 15%. The World Bank estimate that China alone almost accounted for all the reduction in world poverty since 1981.

World poverty, excluding China, dropped from 4 out of 10 people to 3 out of 10 people during the same period. According to the World Bank the world is still on track to halve the 1990 poverty rate by 2015. But at the current rate of progress, about a billion people will still live below $1.25 a day in 2015, and some areas, such as Sub Saharan Africa, will be acutely affected. [The World Bank's 8 new poverty line of $1.25 per day in 2005 is equivalent to its $1 per day poverty line introduced in 1981 after adjustment for inflation.]

Elsewhere, especially in those middle income countries where the World Bank uses a poverty line of $2 a day the poverty rate has indeed fallen. Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa have improved but not enough to bring down their total number of poor. The $2 a day poverty rate has increased in Eastern Europe and Central Asia though these areas showed some small signs of progress since the late 1990s.

We live in a world in which ten children die every minute from malnutrition, where 10.7 million children never live to see their fifth birthday, and where 4 out of 10 human beings have no access to basic sanitation. These are all avoidable statistics.

Meeting the United Nations' 9 millennium goal to halve the proportion of people in the world without access to clean water would cost $4 billion dollars a year for the next decade. Four billion dollars is roughly what Europe's population spends each month on bottled water.

Richard Skellington [see reference 10]

The above figures and blog extract serve to illustrate the point that sustainability is as much about humanity as it is the environment; a cornerstone of the sustainability triangle is "social", and the central ethic of the social paradigm is equity. From the figures presented it can be seen that a large proportion of the wealth is held by a small proportion of the population, and in comparison a large amount of the world's population survive on very little.

## Social Problems in more economically developed countries

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

Vicotr Lebow (1995) [see reference 11]

As well as social problems relating to sustainability being present in less economically developed countries as outlined above, the rise in income and technological advances have also caused social problems of a very different nature in more economically developed countries. Although the population of the richer countries may have access to clean water, health care and shelter, other problems have arrived specifically with the increase wealth and associated technology implemented by the rise of engineering knowledge.

The general trend of increased wealth has been that of increased consumption - of food, fossil fuels, materials and goods. The environmental impacts of this increased consumption have been covered in previous chapters, but there are social problems too.

Firstly, the pursuit of wealth as the primary concern for individuals leads to increased stress, breakdown of family and community and a spiritual chasm. Rates of divorce are rapidly increasing in more economically developed countries and families are not as close as in previous generations, as children will be more likely to move away from parental homes seeking economic betterment.

A general trend is of individualism, where people place themselves at the centre of importance which can lead to mistrust of others, fear, and isolation. Mental illness is also on the rise in more economically developed countries and it could be argued that this isolation is one contributing factor.

Health issues were covered in the food chapter; cases of diabetes, obesity, heart attacks and cancers are all on the rise, caused by poor lifestyle associated with rich and excessive food and lack of exercise often attributed to computer addiction or technological innovation reducing physical activity.

People are generally less connected and have less knowledge about nature; children often do not know where food comes from further than the supermarket. The majority of the population live in cities surrounded by concrete and have a lack of access to green space.

The following passage sums up what we should be aiming for but are still far away from:

(We need to) Recognise that people hunger for a world that has meaning and love; for a sense of aliveness, energy and authenticity; for a life embedded in a community in which they are valued for who they deeply are, with all their wants and limitations, and feel genuinely seen and recognised; for a sense of contributing to the good; and for a life that is about something more than just money and accumulating material goods.

## Globalisation – The Bluring of the Divide

The above definitions of "more economically developed" countries and "less economically developed" countries do not imply a direct split throughout the world. Within each country there are divides between rich and poor. The increase in trade, spread of politics and ideas internationally has blurred the divide between these definitions. This mass exchange of money, pollution, goods, population and ideas is termed as "globalisation" and has dramatically changed the social profile of the world, and is continuing to do so.

The following passage gives four threads or themes of implications of globalisation:

1. Economic: The flows of money, goods and services around the world. In any hour of any day, you can be reminded of this by a glance at the labels on the products you use, or at news reports of a company shifting its plant from one part of the world to another (usually cheaper) location. Although the world has seen unprecedented wealth created via economic globalisation, it has also seen inequalities widen. Increasingly interdependent global economic structures present a huge challenge to attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

2. Political: The flow of ideas, ideologies and political systems. The process of globalisation has disseminated free market capitalist orthodoxy – generally allied to democratic systems of government – throughout the world. With these processes has come growth in the environmental and social movements. Conventions on climate change, biodiversity and trade agreements, shaped by, among others, global rather than national networks (patterns of interaction) of science, business and NGO interests, are tangible expressions of this political globalisation. Globalisation sees longer (and usually more complex) chains of cause and effect established. It is often pointed out that we don't have well-established institutions of global governance. They certainly can't yet claim to match the pace and extent of economic globalisation.

3. Social/cultural: The flow of social practices and cultural products. This is often characterised as 'McDonaldisation' – the relentless spread of western (especially American) culture. However, these flows also include counter-currents, such as the global fame or notoriety of the French anti- globalisation campaigner and farmer Joseph Bové, and the Indian author and environmentalist Arundhati Roy. Some authors argue that the emergent 'global culture' allows the development of a political and ethical underpinning for sustainable development.

  3. Ecological Global: movements of species, specifically in tandem with globalisation human activities of development, trade and tourism. Publicity about global flows of pollutants in the 1960s and 1970s drove many people to support environmentalism. More recently, ozone depletion and climate change represent perhaps the most dramatic evidence of globalised and linked processes of environmental change.

Above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence  
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399359&section=1.2

Globalisation has both positive and negative effects on the social systems of the world. In some ways it enhances the grip of the poor to keep them in poverty through international markets, in others it offers a chance for the mass spread of ideas and knowledge which could bridge the divide between the rich and poor. It is a central concept linked to all other themes explored in this module; some of these linkages will be explored next.

## Climate Change, Poverty, Globalisation and Engineering Linkages

There are links between all of the themes discussed so far, and engineering is a central aspect which applies to these topics.

Above table reproduced with permission by Dr Douglas Bourn, Institute of Education.

For each of the blue boxes above, write down as many factors that you can think of that apply to the highlighted impact. For example an impact of climate change on poverty is that the areas affected by climate change are often were the poorest people live (e.g. desertification in Africa). Conversely an impact of poverty on climate change is that poor people cannot afford to have environmental concerns, forcing them to consume natural resources such as trees to stay alive.

Below are listed the four aspects (climate change, poverty, globalisation and engineering) and for each are listed important factors of how they are linked to each other. The information is taken from "The Global Engineer - Incorporating global skills within UK higher education of engineers" a report funded by the Department for International Development and written by Engineers Against Poverty and the Institute of Education, University of London. It is reproduced here with permission from the authors.

## Climate Change Linkages and Impacts

Impact of climate change on poverty

  * Poor hit earliest and hardest with the least capacity to adapt. Climate change may lead to:

  * Loss of habitats & biodiversity

  * Loss of livelihoods/new opportunities,

  * Increased frequency/ severity of natural disasters, flooding and extreme weather

  * Water scarcity and desertification

  * Conflict, civil unrest and migration

  * Health impacts and food insecurity

  * Complex trade-offs: e.g. biofuels could boost or undermine livelihoods of poor, carbon markets could reduce or entrench poverty

Impact of climate change on globalisation

  * The impacts of carbon trading and the shift towards a low carbon economy especially in energy, transport, foodstuffs, manufacturing, construction and tourism markets

  * Localisation of supply chains and markets due to higher transport costs

  * Increased risk, uncertainty and market volatility, disruption to agriculture and infrastructure

  * Failure to address climate change undermines global economy and support for globalisation process

Impact of climate change on engineering

  * New markets and opportunities in renewable energy, alternative fuels, energy conservation and waste reduction

  * New research/innovation opportunities

  * Disaster preparedness and relief and post disaster reconstruction

  * Low carbon economy especially in energy, infrastructure and construction markets

## Poverty Linkages and Impacts

Impact of poverty on climate change

  * Farming, energy, transport, urbanisation and development choices of developing nations are crucial if global C02 reduction targets are to be met especially in rapidly industrialising countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China)

  * Global carbon trading and emissions targets must recognise the needs and rights of the poor and the obligations of the industrialised nations

Impacts of poverty on globalisation

  * The responsibility to act ethically, contribute to poverty reduction and involve poor in decision making is becoming recognised by global corporations

  * Failure to act responsibly or to address poverty undermines support for current models of globalisation

  * Globalisation criticised by international development and trade reformers

Impact of poverty on engineering

  * Requires low cost solutions that are appropriate to cultural, political, social and economic environment

  * Requires participation of the poor and local knowledge

  * Developing countries are often high risk/high return markets

## Globalisation Linkages and Impact

Impact of globalisation on climate change

  * International supply chains increase energy and transport impacts

  * Reduced production costs increase waste and consumerism fuelling carbon emissions

  * environmental impacts displaced to less developed countries

Impact of globalisation on poverty

  * Social, legal and environmental safeguards often lower in less developed countries

  * Offers economic opportunities especially in natural resources and agriculture, tourism, manufacturing and fair trade goods

  * less developed countries (LDCs) economies vulnerable to capital flight and brain drain, trade rules disadvantage LDCs and undermine national sovereignty

Impact of globalisation on engineering

  * Growth in LDC markets especially in utilities, infrastructure and extractive industries

  * International supply chains promote technology transfer and standardised systems

  * Growth in labour mobility, access to knowledge

## Engineering Linkages and Impacts

Impact of engineering on climate change

  * Transport, energy, agriculture, infrastructure and manufacturing choices determine impacts

  * Engineering and innovation key to mitigation and adapt ion

  * Engineering key to disaster preparedness and reconstruction

Impact of engineering on poverty

  * Engineering key to providing pro-poor energy, transport, shelter, health and water products and services

  * Platform infrastructure and technologies provide an enabling environment for growth

  * Engineering supply chains and technology transfer offer poverty reduction opportunities

Impact of engineering on globalisation

  * Engineering knowledge and innovation especially in transport, energy manufacturing and ICT are the drivers behind economic integration and globalisation

  * Sustainability and climate change will force a revised model of engineering and globalisation

The Global Engineer [see reference 14]

Above text sourced from eprints (Bourn, D. and Neal, L. (2012))(Reproduced with permission)  
http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/839/

## Steps Forward for Solutions to Social Problems

As with the environmental problems listed previously in this module, there is no silver bullet for the social problems highlighted. Three suggestions are outlined below: the first is appropriate technology, or form of engineering to assist people living in poverty. The second, fair trade, a method of ensuring farmers in less economically developed countries obtain a fair price for their produce. The final method advocated is education in both less and more economically developed countries.

## Appropriate Technology

Extract from an essay by Michael Clifford, a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nottingham. Reproduced with permission.

Opinion is divided on the best route to alleviate poverty, but it is clear that technology has a part to play. Often, Western attempts to impose solutions on less developed countries have failed for a variety of reasons. These include lack of training, poor communication with those who will use the technology, lack of understanding of the problem, suspicion on the part of the users and poor support – inability to obtain spare parts for tractors for example. An alternative approach was proposed by Schumacher. In his ground-breaking book, Small is Beautiful (Schumacher, 1999), he suggested that the use of technology in any culture should be appropriate to the needs and resources of the community it is intended to serve.

The precise definition of appropriate technology varies from author to author. One definition suggests some general characteristics that tools and techniques must possess to be in keeping with Appropriate Technology including that it should be low in capital costs, use local materials wherever possible, create jobs, employing local skills and labour, be small enough in scale to be affordable by a small group of farmers, and can be understood, controlled and maintained by rural dwellers with agricultural skills and non scientific technological education. The technology should bring people together to work collectively and bring improvements to local communities, involve decentralised renewable power resources and be flexible so that it can continue to be used or adapted to fit changing circumstances. Finally, it should not involve patents, royalties, consulting fees or import duties (Willoughby, 1990).

Schumacher described such technology as vastly superior to technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper and freer than the super technologies of the rich. He also called it "self help technology", "democratic or people's technology", or "intermediate technology" describing the concept as technology to which everyone can gain admittance and which is not reserved to the rich and powerful.

Schumacher's vision has been interpreted in many ways. Some advocates of developing world interests have baulked at the idea that appropriate technology might mean denying people the right to develop, and have seen the philosophy as a convenient device to perpetuate the rich-poor divide, with some countries locked into an inferior second division of low productivity and drudgery (Emmanuel, 1982). However, the concept of appropriate technology is more about fostering a responsible attitude to the use of technology than restricting it to a particular level (Black, 1991).

If technology is to be used to help to alleviate poverty, it is vital that engineers work closely with communities where the technology will be used rather than impose Western solutions without a thorough understanding of the problem and the capabilities of those using and maintaining any machinery. The appropriate technology approach ensures a participatory process of consultation, discussion, implementation and feedback, allowing maximum use to be made of inventiveness and resourcefulness of village communities and outside engineers.

Clifford [see reference 15]

##  Fair-trade

One critical aspect of the current global crisis is the plight of small producers, particularly those operating in agrarian sectors. The extent of the problem is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the recent waves of suicides among cotton farmers in India, in which thousands of farmers have taken their own lives.1 One initiative that seeks to address the situation of small agricultural producers is the certified Fair Trade (FT) network. Initially purporting to offer an alternative form of trade relations, FT certification offered members of small producer organization higher prices for their produce than available at the world market, as well as providing several other benefits (e.g., advanced payments, a social premium for community development projects, technical assistance, long-term contracts, etc.).

Mukherjee, Reed [see reference 16]

above text sourced from univeritasforum.org (Author: Mukherjee) under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.  
http://www.universitasforum.org/index.php/ojs/article/view/19/85

Max Havelaar (Netherlands) is acknowledged as launching the first Fairtrade consumer guarantee in 1986 on coffee from Mexico. Subsequently, the number of organisations included in the Fairtrade Foundation number some nineteen, running the international standard and setting up and maintaining the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO). Labelling initiatives include many items such as tea, coffee etc. Producers registering with FLO receive a minimum price which covers production costs and an extra premium to be invested in the local community. Members of the FLO Board include four producer representatives' two commercial partners and national Fairtrade initiative representatives. By September 2004 there were 422 Fairtrade certified producers operating in 49 countries. Hundreds of Fairtrade registered importers and retailers operate in 19 countries. Sales across the 18 countries that license the Fairtrade market are growing at about 20% year on year. In most of these countries, Fairtrade products are now mainstream items and available in major supermarkets and independent retailers and are beginning to gain market shares.

OpenLearn [see reference 17]

Above text sourced from The Open University under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence   
http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=425572&section=1.2.3

##  Education

Worldwide, there is a need for education to shift the balance of power. The inequality in the world has long been recognised, and recently there has been a large movement to protest against the large levels of wealth. The financial crisis in the West is a sign that the current system is unsustainable, and has arguably reached its natural conclusion. The protest movements starting with Occupy Wall Street in 2011 spread throughout the world to most of the major cities and was a clear sign to the authorities that there is resistance to the current world powers.

It is clear that there is need for education with in the West, as people become more aware of the disparities in the world they will make life choices to work towards a sustainable future. Education in developing countries will spread knowledge and help to alleviate poverty. It is the role of engineers, with their duty towards society to be aware of the social problems and use their knowledge and expertise to educate as well as implement systems and make use of technology to better the lives of socially disadvantaged both in richer and poorer countries.

## Summary

In this chapter we have explored the levels of inequality in the world, and issues of poverty coupled with excessive wealth which exists. Globalisation, and the rapid increase of sharing of goods, services, wealth and ideas has been explored, and the links between globalisation, climate change, engineering and poverty have all be detailed. Finally we have looked at steps towards a sustainable social future including appropriate technology, fair trade and advocating education in both less and more economically developed nations as tools to progress humanity forward.

The social dimension of sustainability is a core element, and engineers will have a key role to play in realigning the social system to ensure a just and equitable world for society and the world.

## Further reading

Developing countries in the world trade regime

 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397936

The challenge of world poverty

 http://www.oercommons.org/courses/the-challenge-of-world-poverty-fall-2009/view

TED Talks

How economic inequality harms society

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

Ending Hunger Now

 http://www.ted.com/talks/josette_sheeran_ending_hunger_now.html

Poverty, Money, Love

 http://www.ted.com/talks/jessica_jackley_poverty_money_and_love.html

New insights on poverty

 http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Millennium development goals:

 http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html

Environmental degradation and poverty - online teaching resource

 http://ocw.unu.edu/maastricht-economic-and-social-research-and-training-centre-on-innovation-and-technology/environment-and-sustainable-development/lectures/

Blog - Sustainability Education

http://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/

Appropriate Technology

http://www.aidg.org/technologies.htm

Practical Action - appropriate technology for poverty reduction

http://practicalaction.org/

Appropedia - collaborative solutions in sustainability, appropriate technology and poverty

http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia

##  References

1. Ehrenfeld, J (2008), Sustainability by design - a subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture,, Yale University Press, London

2. Skellington, R, Will the poor be always with us? Available online: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/international-development/international-studies/will-the-poor-be-always-us, Accessed 5th May 2012

3. Rusty Blazenhoff, The Pink & Blue Project, Portraits of Kids With Their Pink & Blue Objects, Available online: http://laughingsquid.com/the-pink-blue-project-portraits-of-kids-with-their-pink-blue-objects/, Accessed 5th May 2012

4. jcandeli, what does poverty look like? Available online: http://faithlikemustard.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/what-does-poverty-look-like/ Accessed 4th May 2012

5. Skellington, R, Will the poor be always with us? Available online: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/international-development/international-studies/will-the-poor-be-always-us, Accessed 5th May 2012

6. Open Learn, The Bruntland Report, http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=405678&section=3.3, accessed 6th May 2012

7. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percentage_population_living_on_less_than_$1.25_per_day_2009.svg Accessed on 1st May 2012

8. Gapminder, http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/gapminder-world-map/, accessed on 4th May 2012

9. mckayro, Human development vs. eco footprint, Available online: http://design2good.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/human-development-vs-eco-footprint/, Accessed 3rh May 2012

10. Skellington, R, Will the poor be always with us? Available online: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/society/international-development/international-studies/will-the-poor-be-always-us, Accessed 5th May 2012

11. Dr Maurie Cohen, EPS 622: Sustainable Development, Lecture 6 Ecological Design, Available online: http://ocw.njit.edu/nce/eps/eps-622-cohen/index.php, Accessed 16th April 2012

12. Ehrenfeld, J (2008), Sustainability by design - a subversive strategy for transforming our consumer culture, Yale University Press, London

13. OpenLearn, Globalisation is About Networks, available online: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=399359&section=1.2 Accessed 6th May 2012

14. Bourn, D. and Neal, I. (2012) The Global Engineer - Incorporating global skills within UK higher education of engineers, Available online: http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/839/ accesssed 28th April 2012 (reproduced with permission)

15. Clifford, M. J. (2005) Appropriate Technology: The Poetry of Science, The Higher Education Academy - Engineering Subject Centre Briefing Papers: Education for Sustainable Development, Energy and Energy Systems Edition July 2005

References within the above extract:

Black, JK. (1991) Development in theory and practice, Westview Press.

Emmanuel, A. (1982). Appropriate or underdeveloped technology? John Wiley & Sons.

Schumacher, EF. (1999). Small is beautiful, Hartley & Marks.

Willoughby, KW. (1990). Technology choice, Westview Press.

16. Open Learn Lab Space, Developing Communities of Eco Business Practice, Available online: http://labspace.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=425572&section=1.2.3. Accessed 23rd April 2012

17. Mukherjee, A and Reed, D FAIR TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT:

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF MAINSTREAMING? Available online:

http://www.universitasforum.org/index.php/ojs/article/view/19/85, Accessed 3rd May 2012
Chapter 8: Economics

So far we have covered issues relating to sustainability and how an engineer can implement their skills within society to work towards sustainable systems. In each of the chapters there has been a common theme as to the cause of the unsustainable systems – the constant drive by society for economic growth.

This chapter is therefore intended to explain where economic growth comes from, to discuss different understandings of it in economics and what problems it causes. We will also introduce "ecological economics" which is a concept system that recognises problems with the current system and seeks solutions to them within the bio-physical carrying capacity of the planet. Ecological economics takes many of its ideas from the mainstream subject but with important differences which we will highlight.

Economics, in parallel with environmental and social factors is a cornerstone of the sustainability triangle. The reason for including a chapter on economics in this module is so that engineers can understand the driving forces affecting macro scale social organisation in order to better help contribute to a sustainable future.

The following essay was written by Brian Davey, an Ecological Economist based in Nottingham and is published with a creative commons license.

http://www.feasta.org/2012/04/11/an-introduction-to-ecological-economics/

## What is Economics? – What the Different Paradigms Focus on

Definitions – Economics can be described as the study of how people make choices between alternative allocations of resources – where what we call "resources" are the means available to attained desired ends. Key concepts are:

Allocation: Economics is concerned that allocation decisions about resources are efficient – so that the best use of available means are made - bearing in mind that resources are scarce and not all desired ends can be met.

In neoclassical economics, the mainstream, this question of allocative efficiency is the key focus. However 'allocative efficiency' is not the only dimension. Another approach, that of ecological economics, gives prominence to two other issues in considering the impact of the economic process on the ecological system and on society. These are:

Scale: how far can we go in any given activity and use of resources – what are the bio-physical limits of the ecological system? If we go beyond these limits, ecological economists argue that we are involved in uneconomic growth – because the additional benefits of economic activity are less than the additional costs. These costs take the form of a degraded and exhausted environment, impoverished resources and impaired "eco-system services" passed on to future generations.

Justice: how are the benefits and costs of economic activity distributed in society, including the benefits and costs of action to mitigate or adapt to environmental damage? Do the benefits go predominantly to one group and the costs to another?

A moment's reflection tells us that sustainability is itself a justice concept. As described in Chapter 1 the Brundtland Commission report, written for the UN, defined sustainable development as - "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"

As mentioned in the previous chapter, this definition is about intergenerational justice and it seems, at the very least, inconsistent to assert the importance of inter-generational justice without a parallel concern for justice for people alive today.

In fact there are good reasons to suppose that all of society gains from a concern for distributive justice. For example, two authors, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have assembled a mass of evidence in their book "The Spirit Level" which shows that in rich countries a smaller gap between rich and poor means happier, healthier and more successful populations more generally http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/why.

Although distributive justice is neglected in the economic mainstream, the evidence shows that it matters to general human well-being. The idea, that we do not need to concern ourselves with distribution if growth continues because greater production will provide more for everybody, is too simplistic. The evidence assembled by Wilkinson and Pickett shows that growth will NOT lead to happier, healthier or more successful populations. There is no relation between income per head and social well-being.

##  Pre-Analytical Visions

The concern about scale in ecological economics is related to what Herman Daly has called its different "pre-analytical vision" from that of the neo-classical mainstream. These visions can be represented diagrammatically as follows:

The relationship between the economy and the ecological system is essentially colonial – profit maximising companies push what are termed "environmental costs" unpaid for onto the world around them which economists call "externalities" as if they are minor aberrations in an otherwise efficient system. This aberration can be corrected for as long as prices for resources and waste absorption by the planet are set correctly to incentivize markets to provide substitutes for scarce resources and alternative arrangements for waste absorption. The economy can go on expanding indefinitely.

In the mainstream view any economic activity involves costs, including environmental costs, so whether any particular activity should occur or not is best worked out by comparing the stream of benefits and costs in the future to work out the net benefits. Then, because people have a "time preference" in which current benefits are preferred to future ones, there is a need to discount future net benefits to show what should happen when resources are allocated here and now. In the economics mainstream the interest rate is a payment to compensate people because when they lend money they forego current spending and consumption so need to be paid for doing so. At a 3% interest rate £100 today is worth £103 in one year's time and the logic of discounting arises because, looking at that the other way round, £103 in one year should be discounted back to £100 to get its present value.

Here and now suffice it to note that a concept system that discounts future benefits like this across generations and sees the income of future generations as less important than benefits now is already downgrading priority to future generations. Mainstream economists however have no problem with this because they see economic growth as continuing and assume that future generations will be much richer than we are. Ecological economists think that this begs important questions.

## Markets, Technology, Substitutes to the Rescue?

Mainstream economists do not see things in this way. They assume that markets will be able to anticipate scarcities and problems arising from the limits to growth, that these problems will be reflected in rising prices in forward markets – and then the rising prices will create and incentivise profitable opportunities for technological solutions. If necessary it is recognised that the state may have to step in to adjust prices to ensure that incentivisation is strong enough to bring about the necessary new technologies and substitute arrangements. Thus markets and ingenuity will always provide alternative arrangements on a rising curve of human well-being. The message is therefore that we do not need to be particularly worried about climate change or peak oil or the depletion of fossil energy or other resources. Greater efficiency of resource and energy use and other ways of doing things will enable us to find a way out of our problems.

But there are problems with this view which can be illustrated with a case study – energy usage and carbon by the internet. At the current time the internet uses about 1 to 2% of the global energy supply. Roughly 50% of this is energy used in the internet day to day and the other 50% is the energy used to create the computers, infrastructure and so on. Technological change is so rapid that the energy efficiency of the internet is improving 10 times every 5 years. That seems highly reassuring – however despite this, overall energy usage by the net is doubling every 5 years. Continue that trend for half a lifetime and the net would be using an amount of energy equivalent to the current entire global energy usage. (Starting at 2% and doubling every 5 years this would be 4% in 5 years, 8% in ten, 16% in 15, 32% in 20 and so on....)

The fact that energy usage increases even though energy efficiency is rising was first noticed by the English economist Stanley Jevons in the 19th century. Indeed increased energy efficiency tends to generate increased usage – people with cheaper low energy light bulbs leave them on all night. Corporations that use internet video conferencing between their executives rather than flying them to meet each other save a lot of money and energy – but the money saved is then used for business expansion which means the purchase of goods and services...which consume energy...so the value to the environment of the gains are undone with no absolute reduction occurring.

To lock in the gains of energy and materials efficiency requires an absolute cap on energy usage that is reduced to the sustainable maximum that the planet can bear.

## The Drivers of Economic Growth

If this is so, what drives the current fixation of (un) economic growth? One aspect of the answer is that growth appears to avoid the need to address a variety of problems – because with more growth, it is argued that greater income and wealth in the future can be devoted to dealing with poverty and even environmental problems. The so-called "Environmental Kuznets curve" appears to show an improvement in environmental conditions as societies become richer. However, it turns out that this is largely an illusion because as they become richer countries they 'offshore' their dirty industries to poorer countries like China and then import the products produced with environmentally destructive technologies instead of producing them themselves.

What particularly drives the growth process is, however, a debt based money and banking system. For centuries most societies regarded money lending against collateral and the payment of interest as unethical and socially corrosive. In pre- industrial economies which do not grow repayment of loans with interest compounded each year would transfer greater proportions of national income to money lenders and be destabilising. However, when lending occurs to industries and people whose production and incomes are growing there is an increment of income and production to be shared with lenders. Larger scale production, involved purchased inputs and paying wages with a time gap until later product sales brought money in from distant markets – this frequently necessitated money to be advanced to cover the gap.

The finance sector evolved to serve this need. But now the economy had to keep on growing to repay loans and pay the interest too. If and when the economy did not grow this lead to insolvencies. It also put the solvency of the finance sector at risk if loans could not be repaid.

An insolvent bank sector would have further implications for aggregate demand and markets in the economy. Although most people probably think that it is created by governments 97% of the money in circulation is in the form of deposits created out of nothing when banks make loans. If lending slows down, or goes into reverse with loans being paid back, then the money supply falls. A self-reinforcing vicious circle occurs. With unemployment and bankruptcies increasing, households and companies hold back on discretionary spending on themselves or on investment projects. Expenditure falls even more. The growth economy based on debt money does not have a reverse gear. It grows or collapses.

Only the state can save the economy in these circumstances. Faltering economic activity typically means that taxation revenues will fall while some state expenditure like social welfare and unemployment benefit will rise. So the state tends to fill the deficit in demand but at the expense of a budget deficit. The state (or the central bank) may also step forward to bail out important "too big to fail" institutions like the banks.

All of these processes mean, however, that a crisis of private sector finances arising from too much debt in relation to faltering economic growth gets turned into a crisis of state finances as state revenues fall, and expenditures rise, leading to a rising deficit.

## Economic Problems Facing the World Today

Of course, it would be misleading to understand all economic problems in the world as simply symptoms of a limits to growth crisis. There are other processes going on too that contextualise the situation in which engineers are working. Two other processes in particular are having dramatic consequences for economic activity: financialisation and changing competitive imbalances between countries.

Financialisation

This is the growth and influence of the finance, real estate and insurance sector in many countries has transformed what were service activities into being effectively the dominant sectors in economies – with considerable influence in political systems. Globally the number of transactions involved in trading financial and other assets, transactions in foreign currency exchange, in borrowing and lending, as well as the transactions which are essentially bets about the forward prices of currencies, interest rates and financial assets are all, taken together, much greater than the number of transactions involved in the production of goods and services in the so called "real economy".

As a general rule the finance sector attempts to put all of the risk of borrowing onto the borrower. Other forms of capital provision approaches are possible – for example capital providers and capital users can share profits and losses. However, most Western debt finance involves requiring borrowers to forfeit collateral, for example their house. Thus modern financial systems tend to lend very little to what are seen as risky businesses ventures – instead a large part of lending is for land and buildings and indeed most bank lending is collateralised against the housing and property markets.

Another part of finance sector lending is to governments. If states cannot pay their lenders then the practice enforced by economic orthodoxy is now to privatise their assets – as in the current Greek crisis. Of course, in theory countries that issue their own currencies can always get their central banks to print more to pay their debts and mainstream economists are typically disapproving about this. "Monetizing state debts" risks creating too much money chasing too few goods – in other words it is said to risk inflation and a fall in the value of money to the detriment of savers, typically pensioners. Thus the Treaty of Maastricht bans central banks in the European Union from directly providing money for state bonds. And of course in the eurozone member states cannot print money as they do not issue their own currencies.

This is somewhat ironic because when the money supplies of countries have been created and controlled by the private banking sector in a completely unregulated way then money creation oscillates between the over creation of money which inflates asset prices (particularly land and house prices) and the under creation of money which leads to recessionary conditions. This should not surprise. Banks lend when they and borrowers are most confident, which is during periods of expansion. They thus create credit money and purchasing power when it is not needed and thus tends to over hype the booms. Land prices and rents in particular are inflated because the supply of land and locations is fixed. So wealth concentrates in property and credit is created to cash in on rising property values, which pushes rents and prices up even more. This is a speculative bubble which ends typically because servicing the debt accumulated when buying at the higher and higher prices becomes unsustainable.

Subsequently, in the recession, sentiment is pessimistic so banks are cautious about lending and borrowers cautious about borrowing. So banks create debt money when it is not needed and do not create it when it is needed.

None of us have a divine gift of being able to foresee the future which remains inherently uncertain. This is true also for players in the financial markets who, when they commit money, are making judgements about what they think will happen motivated by the prospect of gain and the fear of loss. So how do they make these judgements? The answer is that, to a large extent, they go along with what other traders are thinking. Markets are powerfully driven by crowd...or herd...psychology. In a speculative boom optimism prevails. In a recession pessimism is infectious.

Indeed a largely ignored economist called Hyman Minsky described bubbles as "the euphoric economy". In such periods of over confidence ethical restraints also tend to loosen. A professor of economics and law, William K Black, estimated that there were at least one half a million crimes committed in the period of the subprime bubble in the USA. Reckless lending to people with no income and no assets brought the brokers bonuses and then the risks of these unsound loans were parcelled up into collateralised debt obligations and passed on to unsuspecting investors like pension funds and banks on the other side of the world.

As Black observes, neoclassical economists like to point out that when economic actors pursue their private interests through markets that a self-organising process occurs that leads to the provision of the goods and services that people want. But the same self organising process, motivated by self-interest, will also self organise the provision of 'bads' too \- for example, a market for crooked accountants to look the other way during a bonanza of predatory lending.

Another important observation is that financial markets (and the politicians looking after their interests) are incredibly short term in their thinking. It is these markets, and their players that have most influence over governments and preoccupation with short term financial issues tends to crowd out consideration of the long term issues that is needed to take decisions about sustainability.

Competitive imbalances between countries

Debt and financial problems are compounded by changing power relationships between nations and parts of the world. Borrowing is a mechanism for dealing with imbalances – if an individual, company, state or nation is spending and consuming more than its income this is possible by running down savings and/or by getting into debt – but only up to a point beyond which crises loom. As competitive imbalances between countries grow, a mechanism for rebalancing exists in changing the exchange rate between their currencies. If the dollar falls against the Chinese yuan then American people have to pay out more dollars to buy yuan and pay out more dollars to buy Chinese goods. At the same time American exports to China would become cheaper in China. It is therefore controversial that the Chinese peg the yuan to prevent this at a rate that makes Chinese imports into America cheap.

In the eurozone, member countries have given up national currencies and therefore lost a mechanism adjusting for competitive imbalances. The southern eurozone countries are sending their purchasing power abroad to buy German goods more than the Germans and northern Europeans are buying in the southern countries and Ireland. This produces shortages of purchasing power – and then unemployment not to mention causing shortages of state revenues and increased state support expenditures in the countries of the south. To a large extent the budgetary crisis in the southern countries are an indirect result of the inability of southern countries and Ireland to compete with Germany. The budget and state debt crises of these countries cannot be solved by cuts and tax increases as this only drives these economies deeper into recession causing state revenues to fall even more in a vicious circle. The other aspect of the crisis has been a property bubble – cheap finance from eurozone banks created speculation in the building and property that burst and leaving southern and Irish governments to bail out the banks.

## Disaster Capitalism

Disasters caused at the limits to growth (e.g. the Russian heat wave that destroyed the harvest in 2010, the floods for two years in Pakistan and in Bangkok, the hurricane that destroyed large parts of New Orleans), catastrophes caused by the financial crisis as well as by competitive imbalances between countries, intensify increasing inequality of power, income and wealth. Those economic sectors that are "too big to fail" and which have access to finance from state backed rescues are in a position to take advantage of the crises of states, companies and individuals. By driving whole societies into ruin opportunities are opened up. Privatised assets can be acquired cheaply. At the same time social unrest, rising crime and distress are profit opportunities for the armaments and securities industries. Further, the $13 trillion bail outs to the US finance sector gives elite financiers cheap money they can use to buy up natural capital resources that become scarcer as the limits to growth kick in – land, harvests, fossil water resources, "carbon credits" and so on. Further money is to be made by funding the public relations industry to bamboozle people with reassuring messages to stabilise by lulling and lying about how serious things are.

## Conclusions: Controversies in Economics

In conclusion, it is useful to remember that economics evolved originally out of the moral philosophy of David Hume, Adam Smith and then the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (whose mummified body can still be seen on display at the London School of Economics at his own request). Mainstream economics is anthropocentric and takes for granted that Planet Earth is there for human use. In this world view nature is turned into a human artefact available as a resource for our consumption. It could not be more different from a view of nature as Pachamama, for example, loosely translated as mother earth, which is the world view of indigenous peoples in the Andes to whom the extractive exploitative economics of "advanced economies" is an anathema, which is why they have passed laws, for example in Ecuador, embodying rights for eco-systems in their constitution.

The utilitarian philosophy from which economics was developed assumed that the welfare of individuals would be reflected in their preferences based on what gives pleasure or reduces pain and these "welfare" seeking motivations are reflected in what prices people are prepared to pay, or will accept in payment for things, including for a clean or safe environment. These preferences are sacrosanct to many neo-classical economists and the attempt of politicians or officials to decide about the environment is held to be inferior to decision mechanisms in which what people are willing to pay, or to accept in payment, for 'environmental goods' is held to most accurately reveal the best choices to maximise "welfare". This way of thinking then leads to benefit cost analysis and to so called "Least Common Denominator Utilitarianism" embodied in the Kaldor-Hicks compensation principle – a policy change is justified if the winners (measured in strictly economic terms) can compensate the losers of a policy and still have something left over.

Quite how this is supposed to work when future generations are not yet here to express their preferences and to be compensated remains unexplained. Nor does the economics mainstream have anything to say about how preferences are formed. Ask people what they are prepared to pay to protect pandas and polar bears and you might get a positive sum of money offered – but a survey of uninformed people are probably less prepared to pay for the bamboo that pandas eat and even less for the creepy crawlies that are integral part of the eco-system in which pandas... and humans.... find themselves. All of this suggests that for environmental policy to be appropriate it must be well informed and the subject of collective deliberation in decision making processes that are quite unlike how we express our preferences in purchasing decisions between the alternatives of baked beans and spaghetti hoops in a supermarket.

The matter of available information is particularly important because many environmental decisions are about issues where there is a great deal of uncertainty in what outcomes will be. Mainstream economics does not have a good record in taking uncertainty into account, especially where it is what is called "strong uncertainty" \- unknown unknowns or known unknowns but where risks and probabilities cannot be calculated.

In order to show from its starting assumptions that competitive markets optimally allocate resources in the best of all possible worlds, economic theorists have constructed theoretical models that assume that market actors have "perfect information" now and about the future. This seems a long way from the real world in which none of us have a divine ability to foresee the future, in which it takes time and effort to find about current situations, in which people have great reluctance to accept unpleasant realities, in which there are taboos against some kinds of knowledge because of ideological allegiances in groups, in which there is a massive network of arrangements to ensure that many business dealings, including environmentally destructive ones, are kept secret - and in which there is good deal of misinformation put out by the public relations industry hired by vested interests in order to throw doubt on inconvenient truths – for example about climate science.

Nor is it true that all people decide on environmental issues based on maximising their personal welfare. Many people decide to do things not because those things will give them pleasure, or reduce their pain, but because they think that they ought to or because they think that it is the right thing to do. This includes doing things that do not give them pleasure but are perhaps risky, or involve considerable self-sacrifice. The world is full of war memorials celebrating dead people who were clearly not motivated by utilitarian principles.

In conclusion, as the economy reaches the limits to economic growth new ways of thinking are needed in order to be able understand what is happening, approaches that are transdisciplinary. Unfortunately there is considerable inertia in the realm of ideas and considerable fragmentation of subjects which makes the broad viewpoint that is needed unavailable to mainstream economics, a discipline that has become over-specialised. Even worse, the thinking of economists typically reflects the viewpoint of powerful vested interests, taking for granted the world view and agendas of wealthy clients as self-evident and unproblematic. The physicist Max Planck argued that in science, new ideas rarely displace old ones because an old guard are converted to new ways of thinking - Saul does not become Paul on the road to Damascus. Rather the old guard retires and dies and a new generation replaces them who are familiar with a different way of thinking. It is important that training engineers familiarise themselves with the new way of thinking in economics for the very different and difficult world we are entering.

## Reading, References and Internet Videos

Herman E Daly and Joshua Farley. "Ecological Economics", Island Press, 2004 A textbook of ecological economics one of whose authors, Herman E Daly, is one of the original pioneers of the subject.

Herman E. Daly "Uneconomic growth in theory and in fact" First annual Feasta Lecture 1999 , in Feasta Review number one, Dublin 2001 - available at http://www.feasta.org/documents/feastareview/daly1.pdf

Tides Foundation/Annie Leonard The Story of Stuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

Richard Douthwaite and Gillian Fallon (eds) "Fleeing Vesuvius. Overcoming the consequences of economic and environmental collapse" Feasta Books 2011 available as separate downloadable articles from http://fleeingvesuvius.org/contents/

Josh Ryan-Collins, Tony Greenham, Richard Werner and Andrew Jackson "Where does money come from? A guide to the UK monetary and banking system" New Economics Foundation, 2011 Explains how the banking system creates new money and concludes that the current money system is inherently unstable.

Steve Keen "Debunking Economics. The Naked Emperor Dethroned", Zed Books 2011 This is a sort of anti-textbook that demolishes most of the theory found in standard economics textbooks. It has little on ecological and environmental issues however. Very thorough in what it does but not for beginners.

Phillip B Smith and Manfred Max-Neef "Economics Unmasked. From power and greed to compassion and the common good". Green Books 2011. Another general critique of mainstream economics - this one concentrates on social justice and environmental issues.

Fred Harrison "Boom Bust." Shepheard -Walwyn Publishers, 2005 A study of the economics of the land market and the financial system. Harrison is also associated with the Renegade Economist blog http://www.renegadeeconomist.com/

http://michael-hudson.com/2012/03/film-real-estate-4-ransom/ Real estate for ransom -- Australian internet video on the role of property speculation, land and rent in the Great Recession. This internet video is on the website of Professor Michael Hudson who, taking a viewpoint derived from of the classical economists, views most neo-classical theory, that justifies the predations of the finance, real estate and insurance sector, as "junk".

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and the rise of disaster capitalism

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg

Yves Smith, "Econned" Palgrave Macmillan 2010 This book is an expose of the corruption and lawlessness of Wall Street high finance by an author who runs the Naked Capitalism blog http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

internet video lecture on economic crime by a Professor of Law and Economics, William K Black Why Elite Frauds Cause Recurrent, Intensifying Economic, Political and Moral Crises.

https://webdisk.lclark.edu/econ/steinhardt2010/steinhardt2010.html

Daniel W. Bromley and Jouni Paavola (eds), "Economics, Ethics and Environmental Policy. Contested Choices." Blackwell Publishing, 2002 a set of essays that debate the philosophical basis of economics thinking on the environment. Good to help understand the limits of benefit cost analysis and the utilitarian concepts at the heart of economics that turn nature into a human artefact.

internet video Clive L Spash "The Limitations and Dangers of Economic Valuation. Reflections on the 'New' Approach to Bio-Policy" Video lecture - shows the questionable logic and ethical issues involved in market approaches to protecting biodiversity http://vimeo.com/20787185

internet video Clive L. Spash "The Brave New World of Carbon Trading" - debunks the arguments for the current carbon trading regime - these are ideas for which Spash was censored and ended up having to resign his job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWQ4ENYKZz4&feature=player_embedded

Brian Davey (ed) "Sharing for Survival: Restoring the Climate, the Commons and Society" Feasta Books 2012

Clive L Spash Fallacies of economic growth in addressing environmental losses: Human Induced climatic change. Article that does what it says on the tin. www.clivespash.org/fgml.pdf

How to help create environmentally sustainable and self-reliant neighbourhoods http://www.lifewithoutmoney.info/images/Achieve%20Now.pdf \- Start living now as you may have to during energy descent!
Chapter 9: Moving Forward

This is the final chapter of the module and is intended to highlight next steps from the variety of social, environmental and economic factors that have been outlined in the area of sustainability and engineering. The problems shown demonstrate very real problems the world and society is facing in the coming years. This chapter is intended to answer the question of "that is all very well, but what can we do about it?"

This question is not an easy one to answer, as the problems related to sustainability are complex, linked and of no single source. Logically therefore there are no single "silver bullet" answers to these problems and none are presented here. Instead suggested are concepts, general ideas and methods for an engineer to have in their meta toolbag to equip them to make decisions in their life and career to work towards a sustainable future.

Sustainability has begun to take a more prominent role in the media and society as a whole, as the very obvious problems of exponential growth, resource depletion, environmental pollution and social inequality are becoming more apparent. The role of engineering, in a broad sense a profession of problem solving, is significant. Engineering in itself is a wide and diverse profession, and its applications applied to sustainability are similarly diverse.

The chapter will be split into three sections: the first outlining steps individuals can make in their own lives to address the challenges of sustainability, the second contains suggestions for starting a career in engineering related to sustainability. The final section will give some case study examples of organisations and individuals working in the broad field of sustainability.

Throughout the chapter are blogs, essays and case studies from a variety of authors each giving their own thoughts and experiences of working towards sustainability. The diversity of the authors highlights the fact that there is a need for a diverse range of solutions, and a similarly wide skill set and approach to problem solving in sustainability. The resources are there to provide ideas and inspiration for you to decide if and where you can place yourself to be most effective working for a better world.

## Individual Actions Towards Sustainability

"Be the change you want to see in the world" -Ghandi

When faced with the enormity of a problem such as global climate change, wide-scale deforestation or peak natural resources, there are two ways of confronting it. The first would be to assume that the problem is so big and the causes so wide and diverse that any action made by an individual is insignificant so therefore not of any relevance and not worth starting. Another angle would be to consider the world and everything in it as immensely complex but with individual components and indeed actions all linked and interdependent.

The concept that everything is linked in some way means that actions however small are significant, and will affect everything else. It with this latter philosophy that lifestyle choices can be made consciously and with conviction, and through greater number of people putting into practice what they believe day to day, that positive change can occur. There is an obvious need for top level coordination and direction when tackling global issues such as climate change, but as is explained in a following article, real change can be lead from the bottom up, with governments responding to powerful grassroots movements.

In this way everybody has the potential to be a leader in sustainability. In the West especially there is a level of privilege and security that give freedom to consider these ideas and put into practice what we believe. The concept of leadership coming from the bottom up is described in more detail by Satish Kumar, editor in chief of resurgence magazine, in the article below.

We are all leaders, Satish Kumar [1]

True and effective leadership is more about inspiration, facilitation and right action than about outcome, achievements and unrealistic targets.

A real leader leads by example. Anyone who demands, "Do as I say and not as I do!" is not a good leader. Integrity between words and deeds is an essential quality of inspirational leadership. Mahatma Gandhi was once asked: "When you call upon people to do something, they follow you in their millions; what is the key to your successful leadership?"

Gandhi reputedly replied: "I have never asked anybody to do anything I have not tried and tested in my own life. We have to practise what we preach. In other words, we have to be the change we wish to see in the world."

One living example is more effective than a million words; congruence between preaching and practice is a prerequisite for purposeful leadership. We are all potential leaders, because we can all lead our own lives in the right direction.

We can show the world that a good life can be lived without exploitation, subjugation or domination of others, or of natural resources. We can show that a simple, wholesome and equitable life can be joyful and good. We can show that happiness doesn't flow from material goods or the amount of money in our bank accounts: rather, happiness flows from the quality of the life we live, and the kind of relationships we have with our families, with our communities and with the natural world.

This is bottom-up leader-ship. Genuine leadership is not going to emerge from parliament or presidential palace. Leadership is not about legislation. The end of apartheid in South Africa, the establishment of civil rights in the USA and many other such transformations occurred in the history of humanity because millions of people took action at grassroots level and refused to accept the unjust order of the day. The feminist movement and the environmental movement are examples of people taking personal responsibility to participate in the process of the great transformation necessary for a just, sustainable and resilient future for the Earth and her people.

Leadership is an inner calling to lead ourselves and the world from subjugation to liberation, from falsehood to truth, from control to participation and from greed to gratitude.

We can all be leaders. All we have to do is wake up, stand up, live and act.

This eloquent passage gives inspiration that our actions have significance, and that we should be active in leading the way from the bottom up. The next question, then, is what to do?

The answer relies often on an individual's personal ethics, background and lifestyle. Some may be more concerned with social justice, and put their efforts towards campaigning. Others may have more environmental concerns, and do everything they can to live a low impact lifestyle, eventually aiming to be living self-sufficiently away from society. Some would say that money is the root of all the problems and dedicate their time to living without it in a gift or barter economy.

These may all be extremes, and the reality is that a balance needs to be obtained where you can address issues that concern you while finding time to earn a living and enjoy yourself. In the next article, again by Satish Kumar, the concept of a manifesto is introduced. Kumar outlines his "Green Manifesto", a list of actions he feels address the problems of sustainability. The list of actions stems from a powerful concern for the problems that they address.

Perhaps the first step of confronting sustainability is to decide what we feel strongly about, what our vision for the future looks like, and from this consider how we can best achieve that with the resources available to us.

Above text sourced from Satish Kumar (See reference 1), reproduced with permission from The Tablet (www.thetablet.co.uk)

Caring for the Planet, Satish Kumar [2]

It is easy to feel impotent in the shadow of the political and corporate interests that exercise so much power over the environment. The questions that instinctively arise when we feel a sense of anger and urgency about human treatment of the natural world - What can I do? Can I effect change? Can I make my voice heard? - seem so often to be answered with a resigned "Nothing" or "No". What possible difference could my living habits make to the future health - even survival - of the natural world?

But just as individual habits will remain an eccentric idealism without political and corporate change, so political and corporate change will remain superficial and inadequate without personal change. Indeed, without individual action these larger changes will not occur. Political change will only happen when large numbers of people practise what they believe in. When there is a big enough groundswell of opinion and enough action, then governments will be forced to bring in laws and structural transformations. Based on my own personal experiences of practicable, sustainable living, here is my manifesto for how we, as individuals, can begin to cause this to happen. I hope that others may gain hints for their own lives from my recommendations.

Change our attitudes. Our industrial culture is human-centred and utilitarian. We value nature because of its usefulness to us; we believe that we are in charge and can do what we like with the world's natural resources. If we want a sustainable future we need to change this mind-set. We need to recognise that all life has intrinsic value. Without such a shift in our personal attitudes towards the natural world, no sustainable lifestyle can be achieved. In place of the utilitarian calculus, a reverential, respectful world-view is required. Then we will destroy less, poison less, kill less.

Live simply. A high living standard – measured by wealth and material acquisition - has become the be-all and end-all of modern society. For an eco-friendly life we need to seek quality of life instead. More bluntly, we need to live more simply, so that others may simply live. Any fool can make life complicated; it requires genius to make it simple.

Consume less. Fifty years ago the world's population was 3 billion. Now it has doubled to 6 billion and humans, at their present rate of consumption, are exceeding the capacity of the earth - something we all have to take personal responsibility for. Someone living in the West consumes 50 times more than a person in the Third World, which means, effectively, that the Western population is multiplied by 50 times. Therefore, live more lightly, taking from nature only what is needed, so as to make a smaller footprint on the earth. "There is enough in the world for everybody's need, but not enough for anybody's greed", said Mahatma Gandhi.

Waste not. Waste is a sin against nature and a curse of modern life. Every day, millions of tons of waste are thrown into the natural world, which it simply cannot cope with. The pile of old cookers, washing machines, fridges, computers and televisions is now accumulating at 6m. tons a year, a rate that is expected to double by 2010, and most of it ends up as landfill, wasting resources and posing risks to health and the environment. Millions of plastic bottles and plastic bags are cluttering and clogging the system, polluting rivers and oceans. Therefore, reusing, mending and recycling must be regarded as great virtues. Waste-makers simply cannot call themselves responsible citizens.

Use less harmful products when cleaning the house and washing clothes (such as the Ecover detergents). One very simple step is to re-use plastic bags, or take a cloth bag when you go shopping. Another is to rediscover the old maxim "make do and mend", to resist the temptation to replace utensils (old cookers and washing machines) and furniture when the old ones will do. In doing this you will strike at consumerism.

Walk. Our lives have become dependent on cars - even for a short distance. This lack of exercise makes us obese and unhealthy, with less energy than we might have if we walked. We live in homes, drive around in machines and work in offices; we hardly ever come into contact with the natural world. But if we do not know, see, and experience nature, how can we love it? And if we do not love nature, how can we protect it? So walking in nature, talking walking holidays and walking to work can be a real doorway to green living.

Meditate and pray. Our lives have become too busy and too stressful. Pressure of work, pressure to succeed, pressure to achieve, pressure to cope with excess information - pressure all around. To restore the balance we need to take some time during the day for personal replenishment, for the development of soul qualities, for reflection and for our proper relationship with the natural world and the Creator to develop and grow. Every day, for at least half an hour, we need solitude, stillness and silence, so that the rest of the day is built on a foundation of spiritual tranquillity.

Work less. In spite of mass production, industrialisation, automation and mechanisation, Westerners are overworked, often to the point of exhaustion. Too often by the time people come home they have no energy to do anything other than sit in front of the television set. In spite of our wealth and unprecedented economic growth, our work makes us slaves. For a sustainable future we need to work less, do less, spend less and be more. From simply being will emerge relationships, celebrations and joy. Sustainable living is joyful living.

Be informed. No one can lay down a blueprint for green living: each of us has to develop our own ideas. But we have to build on all the new thinking in this field. There are books, magazines and courses which can help us. We need to make time to study.

Protest. Vested interests will always find ways to fool people and seek profit and power which damage the earth. Therefore we need to be awake and alert to the exploitative actions of others. But such protests cannot be made alone; we have to be in solidarity with organisations working for a sustainable future, such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and Christian Aid. Choose an organisation which suits your temperament and work with your local community, form a local group and take interest in local politics.

Finally, take heart in the fact that huge multinational companies are now beginning to proclaim the virtues of "sustainable consumption". Unilever, for example, has vowed that by 2005 it will only fish only from sustainable sources, while its competitor Proctor & Gamble is coming up with innovative products such as detergents that require less water, heat and packaging.

These moves are not expressions of some sort of corporate social responsibility, however. Companies will only embrace environmental ethics if there are profits in them. Those profits will depend on the choices made by individuals like you and me.

Above text sourced from Satish Kumar (See reference 2), reproduced with permission from The Resurgence website (www.resurgence.org)

Exercise - what is your manifesto?

Give some thought to what subjects covered in this module (or other areas not covered in this module) that have particularly stuck out as important issues to address. What should people be doing about them? Draft a manifesto. Start with "I believe...."

## Careers in Sustainability

Having looked at choices an individual can make in their lives towards sustainability, we will now examine steps to take for a career in sustainability, specifically in the engineering sector. Each chapter in this module has suggested engineering solutions to the problems of unsustainability, and looking at the scale of the problems it would be prudent to assume that there should be no shortage of work for engineers!

Firstly suggestions about gaining education both formal and informal are suggested, followed by a list of resources on volunteering and internships. Then some blogs and websites giving information about getting a job in the area of sustainability are included, before a final section about "doing it yourself", or setting up a company or organisation from scratch.

##  Education

Learning and education are a key first step in confronting sustainability. By keeping yourself well informed about the problems that are happening to the world and society you are better equipped to have the creativity and innovation required to produce solutions. As mentioned in the first chapter, exponential growth of consumption of resources means that everything is changing at a fast rate. The statistics presented in this module will soon be out of date, so it is essential to stay informed and be up to date with the current worldwide situation.

Learning can take the form of formalised education, such as a master's degree, or other academic qualifications. Recently there has been a big increase in the number of institutions offering degree and postgraduate qualifications on subjects related to sustainability. Internet searching will provide many more opportunities, catered exactly to your interests, but listed below is a small selection of Masters Degrees offered related to the subject content of this module:

Centre for Alternative Technology Graduate School of the Environment

MSc Renewable Energy and the Built Environment (REBE)

MSc Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies (AEES)

MSc Sustainable Horticulture and Food Production

http://gse.cat.org.uk/

Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology, Loughborough University

Renewable Energy Systems Technology (MSc)

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/el/research/centres/crest/

Water, Engineering and Development Centre, Loughborough University

Water and Environmental Management

Water and Waste Engineering

Infrastructure in Emergencies

http://wedc.lboro.ac.uk/

University of Nottingham

MSc Sustainable Building Technology

Sustainable Energy Engineering Masters (MSc)

http://pgstudy.nottingham.ac.uk/

Formalised academic education is not necessarily the best path for everyone, and knowledge, experience and skills can be gained through other informal routes, such as reading books, peer learning and internet research. Many organisations run practical courses for those wishing to gain a more hands on approach of learning; some of these are listed below:

Low Impact Living Initiative

LILI offer practical short courses on a range of topics related to sustainability

http://www.lowimpact.org/courses.htm

Schumacher College

An educational institute based on the ideas of E.F. Schumacher that offers a range of courses for anyone interested in sustainability

http://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses

Centre for Alternative Technology

CAT also offer short courses of a practical nature on a range of subjects

http://www2.cat.org.uk/shortcourses/

##  Experience

Any employer related to sustainability or not, will be interested in taking somebody on that has had at least some relevant work experience when they apply. Volunteering or taking on an internship at a relevant organisation or company can be a good way to gain this experience, and also to get a better idea if that type of work is what you are looking for. Below is a list of websites that list opportunities for volunteering in the UK and abroad in the field of sustainability and engineering. Web searching for volunteering opportunities of a specific interest will provide a more detailed selection of vacancies.

EWB International

Engineers Without Borders - International (EWB-I) is an international association of national EWB/ISF groups whose mission is to facilitate collaboration, exchange of information, and assistance among its member groups that have applied to become part of the association.

http://www.ewb-international.org/

Idealist  
Non-profit Career Centre with volunteer opportunities in your community and around the world, and a list of organizations that can help you volunteer abroad. Also features job and internship listings  
www.idealist.org

Volunteering England  
this site provides free information, and details of the services provided to those who work with volunteers and people looking for volunteer work.  
www.volunteering.org.uk/

Environmentjob.co.uk  
Environmental Jobs, Course and Events  
http://www.environmentjob.co.uk/volunteering/50-Sustainability

VSO Engineering and Technical  
Engineering and technical volunteers tend to work in either secure livelihoods programmes to help people make a decent living or our health programmes to support healthcare services.  
http://www.vso.org.uk/volunteer/opportunities/engineering/

Global Career Building Internships  
Focus on international placements  
http://www.gointernabroad.com/

London Students Towards Sustainability (LSTS) Internship Scheme **  
**Helps harness the skills and enthusiasm of the next generation of sustainability professionals by providing links to employers across the public, private and NGO sectors.  
http://www.lsx.org.uk/whatwedo/internship%20scheme_page3145.aspx

Engineers Without Borders UK  
Offer volunteering placements in international development and sustainability in the UK and abroad for student engineers  
http://www.ewb-uk.org/

## Finding a Job

The eventual aim of anyone wanting to work in sustainability is to ideally find a job that matches their competencies, ideals and pays enough to cover the bills. Achieving a perfect balance of all three will be difficult to find, but it may be the case that each are addressed at different times in your career. As is explained in the following blog post, there is no set path to obtaining a perfect job, and in the field of sustainability there is less of a linear career path. Flexibility, a diverse skill set and strong convictions are useful tools to have.

5 Strategies to Finding a Sustainability Job, Bob Willard [3]

We all seek the holy grail of a position that matches our convictions, needs, and competencies. People who want to make a difference sometimes ask me for advice on how to find a job in the "sustainability sector." The bad news is that there is no such sector, any more than there is a "quality sector." The good news is that there are roles in organizations that include varying degrees of responsibility for sustainability: in the organization, with its suppliers, and/or helping its clients become more sustainable enterprises. Here are five strategies to help find one of those great jobs.

1. Decide where you would be most energized

Sector: Public sector? Private sector? Not-for-profit sector? Academia? Consulting?  
Organization Size: Large? Small? Solo?  
Sustainability Focus: Environmental? Social?  
Industry Sector: Which industry sector attracts you?  
Location: Which city or country attracts you?  
Financial Security Needs: How important are salary and benefits?

Use your excitement level as a barometer for each choice. Does the possibility excite you? Why? Why not? To help confirm your options, consider volunteering or doing a small contract at a potential organization of interest. It will give you first-hand knowledge of what it's like to work there; it shows tangible evidence of your interest; it gives you a chance to acquire new experience and skills; and it adds new contacts to your professional network.

2. Work your existing network

As Richard Bolles explains in "What Colour is Your Parachute?" 80% of jobs are found through existing professional acquaintances, friends, and family. These known folks usually provide the most fruitful leads. Bolles advises job-seekers to devote most of their search-time to tapping into—or rebuilding—their existing networks, and to developing new contacts. People are the ones who provide a real-time pipeline of information about where the jobs are—ideally before they are posted. Alumni and professional associations are strong resources, as are social media, such as LinkedIn. If your qualifications warrant a senior role in a large company, you might consider using an executive recruiting agency.

3. Shop your non-sustainability skills, match your values

There are not many "sustainability" jobs out there yet. However, there are a growing number of organizations that espouse sustainability and which are undertaking exciting initiatives for environmental and social responsibility. If you opt for the corporate sector, seek organizations whose values match yours. Sell them on your transferable and technical skills, and your experience. That is, use the Trojan Horse approach: enter the company gates by starting in a "normal" job. Then, assess how you can legitimately support sustainability initiatives from that position, or from a subsequent position within the company that you later discover is a better fit.

4. Talk their language

This is a pet theme of mine. As you apply to various organizations, re-tune your CV and your interview vocabulary so that it relates to their context, values, and challenges. Sell them on how you can add value to their current priorities—always being careful to avoid "sustainability-speak" if the interviewer is not comfortable with that lens on the company's business concerns.

5. Embrace a Non-Linear Career Path

In the past, our paths towards careers were much more linear. We graduated from school, college, or university; we got an entry level position in a company; and in cases like mine, we slowly climbed through the ranks in that company. Today, in a job market that is constantly shifting and presenting new types of jobs we need to embrace a non-linear career path. That means being open to taking a mechanical engineering job designing a well in a foreign country, then coming back and using that experience to get a job in another corporation designing their broader sustainability plans.

I expect that these strategies reinforce your instincts and experience when finding a good job. Just because sustainability is a good thing, that doesn't mean that organizations are waiting with open arms for you to help them become more responsible enterprises. It takes real effort and patience to find a good fit, and it may require a few interim positions to get there, but it is worth it.

The following are job portals in the UK listing engineering jobs related to sustainability. Again web searching with specific keyword to areas of interest will produce more fruitful results.

Learning for Sustainability

This page provides some key links for using the Internet to track down job vacancies and volunteering programmes in the fields of environment and development.  
http://learningforsustainability.net/jobs/

Environmentjob.co.uk  
Environmental jobs from conservation through recycling to environmental education.  
www.environmentjob.co.uk

Ethical Jobs  
Solar engineering to sustainable development and care work.  
www.ethical-jobs.co.uk

Grad Cracker  
General site for graduate engineers (search for a relevant keyword)  
www.gradcracker.co.uk

Amide  
A specialist recruitment business dedicated to global Sustainable Development, recruiting for Buildings, Transport, Energy, Water, Environment and Corporate Sustainability.  
http://www.amida-recruit.com/home.aspx

Acre  
An international recruitment and executive search firm specialising in the corporate responsibility, energy efficiency, carbon, environmental and health & safety market  
http://acre-resources.com/

## Be Your Own Boss

The final option is to set up a company or organisation yourself. The rewards of being your own boss and being able to directly follow your own vision are weighed up with the challenges and responsibilities of running a company in full, which has the possibility of taking up a large amount of your time. However in the field of sustainability there is more of a need for innovative solutions that may not be addressed by current companies. In this respect it is feasible that many new start-up companies will occur in the following years all focusing on a different part of the sustainability challenge not currently addressed. If this is does sound attractive to you, it may still be advisable to get some experience in a company that already exists if not only to see how a business is run and learn some "tricks of the trade."

Two case studies are presented below of groups that saw a need and set up an organisation to address it.

V3 Power

V3 Power is a DIY renewable energy cooperative that focuses on educational projects in the field of renewable energy. Their main activity is running courses teaching people how to build small wind turbines using simple tools and materials. V3 was started by a group of students (myself included) from Nottingham University that wanted to use skills gained in their degree in a practical and useful way. They felt strongly about the need for people to DIY (Do It Yourself) and have focused on practical education and capacity building in this respect. The cooperative has been going for 6 years now, and have worked internationally installing over 15 wind turbines and running courses for diverse audiences around the world. The services it offers have expanded to include running practical and engaging workshops in schools about renewable energy, installing off and on grid wind turbines, technical services for medium sized wind turbines and renewable energy consultancy.

http://www.v3power.co.uk/

Demand Energy Equality

This is a Bristol based group that run workshops on building solar PV panels, providing a cheaper way of utilising renewable energy for low income housing. From their website:

We have two objectives to our DIY Solar PV workshops.

1.To reduce the cost of solar panels and enable low income households to gain access to empowering solar PV technology as there is a growing divergence between those who can afford renewable power.

2.To utilise the potential these technologies offer in reducing household energy demand. Energy demand reduction is possible when people have a greater understanding and relationship with these technologies.

The two objectives are achieved through workshops where community groups and individuals build their own solar panels, learn how to connect the panels to their homes, source recycled materials and correlate their supply of renewable power with their demand. We also teach workshop leaders the skills to go out into their communities to run their own workshops. We are about teaching the skills and knowledge so people can then build themselves solar panels, in doing so empower and power themselves. The panels cost half that of the cheapest commercial panel and we provide the workshops on a sliding scale so financial barriers to attendance are as minimised.

http://www.demandenergyequality.org/index.html

The following is an extract from a talk given by an accountant who works in the area of sustainability field, and his advice on getting a job in the field

Careers in Sustainability, David Brent [4]

I work at Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity that works in partnership with companies and government bodies to create a sustainable future. I believe that 'sustainability' issues are already huge and will become more important. We will spending the next decades creating a low-carbon world. Sustainability issues are driving the context in which all of us have to forge our careers. They will dominate your working lives.

I did a Masters in Physics at Exeter College but spent most of my time on what were then known as development and environment issues. I was part of Third World First (now called (People and Planet) and of that first Alternative Careers Fair. Then I had a bit of an alternative careers fail. I didn't want to be a burden on my parents, and I wanted a solid professional qualification. So I became an accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. My friends accused me of selling my soul; I said I had mortgaged it.

Not surprisingly I didn't enjoy my time at PwC. I realised that, fundamentally, whoever does the accounts or audit should come up with the same answer. And that means training people to conform, and avoid too much critical thinking or creativity. I needed a path out, so I did a Masters in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath. So many people found the course to be life-changing – generating an invaluable set of skills and connections. In the last weeks of that course no fewer than eight people sent me a job advert to be a green accountant at Forum for the Future. I applied and go it. In the last 8 years I have had a new role in Forum every two years – sustainability accountant, Head of Business Strategies and now Deputy Director. I'm satisfied by: making a difference; contributing the sum of human knowledge; and breaking new ground in a vital area.

What does it mean for you?

1.You can mortgage your soul (that is, it is possible to use corporates for training and credibility) but you need to be careful you don't get sucked in, with ever-narrowing horizon and dependent on the salary.

2.Follow your passion, with an eye to what your future self might want.

3.Sustainability is an immature field, so there is no established career path yet. This is both a blessing and a curse – you can forge something new but the onus is on you to make that new path. There is greater professionalism on the way, with specialisms and associated qualifications.

4.Everyone has a choice about whether to go deep and specialise or go wide as a connector and intellectual omnivore. Your choice will depend on your skills and personality.

5.Internships are common routes for credibility.

6.the normal rules of job hunting and career development apply.

1.what are you good at and what value is that to anyone else?

2.what weakness do you need to make sure you get to a minimum level?

3.how does your next step build the options you want?

Finally...There has always been something to be done. In the last century people fought fascism, rebuilt Western Europe and saw off communism. Building a sustainable word is the task of our generation. It will be tough, but it will also be a great life's work for us all.

## Case Studies

Included below are a snapshot of examples of organisations and individuals that demonstrate engineering's role in sustainability. They are intended to give suggestions and inspiration to someone interested in getting involved in working in a career in engineering and sustainability. At the end of this chapter is a comprehensive list of links to relevant websites of organisations, both with an engineering focus and some with more general themes who's aims are to tackle to problems facing the world.

##  Organisations

The organisations are here to show suggestions of types of groups someone wanting to embark on a career in sustainability might wish to apply to for an internship or a paid position. The organisation's histories are also detailed as they show how quickly a shared idea of a few enthusiastic individuals can grow to national or international organisation making big changes in the world.

The Centre For Alternative Technology (CAT)

CAT was started in 1973 by a group of environmental enthusiasts and activists that wanted to create a "test bed" for new ideas and technologies related to sustainability. They purchased a disused slate quarry in Mid Wales to use as a base to live while researching, creating and testing eco-friendly technologies. Progress was slow to start, but the project gained momentum as word spread about what was happening and new volunteers arrived bringing a variety of skills and knowledge with them. In 1974 following a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh, part of the site was turned into a visitors centre to generate interest in alternative technology and demonstrate CAT's Vision.

CAT has since grown to be Europe's leading eco centre, with 90 permanent staff and volunteers and receiving around 65,000 visitors every year. Today the mission statement of the organisation is as follows: "CAT is concerned with the search for globally sustainable, whole and ecologically sound technologies and ways of life." They achieve this by inspiring, informing and enabling people to make positive change in their life towards sustainability.

Their themes of practice are diverse, covering topics such as land use, shelter, energy conservation and use, diet and health, waste management and recycling. They stress that a holistic approach to sustainability is paramount.

The site itself contains a large range of demonstrations of renewable energy, sustainable build practices, and organic growing. There is also a resident community and work organisation based on the site, which has evolved and formed from the original members living on the quarry. The community and work group are committed to the implementation of co-operative principles and best achievable environmental practices.

The services CAT offers include the following:

  * A visitor centre which is open 7 days a week, with 7 acres of interactive displays.

  * A free information service answering enquiries on all aspects of sustainable living.

  * A graduate school with a range of postgraduate degrees in environmental architecture and renewable energy.

  * Residential and one-day courses for the general public, as well as more specialised courses for builders, engineers, electricians and plumbers.

  * Curriculum-based education to visiting schools, colleges and universities.

  * Residential education trips for schools and colleges in unique eco-cabins.

  * Educational outreach work, including teacher training and school visits.

  * Publishing books on key environmental issues – and their solutions.

  * Long-term and short-term volunteer programmes for those that want to gain hands-on experience.

CAT also has conducted a series of research reports addressing scenarios for reducing the UK's emissions to zero in 20 years, called ZeroCarbonBritain.

CAT has recognised the need to educate and inform and these concepts have been central to their goals. As well as a quality training institution for engineers wanting to work in sustainability it is also an invaluable source of information for anyone concerned about the environmental degradation of the planet and interested in holistic solutions.

http://www.cat.org.uk/

Practical Action

Fritz Schumacher was a radical economist who is best known for his book "Small Is Beautiful" (published in 1973), which criticises conventional development strategies of large scale capital intensive industry and economic growth to reduce poverty. Instead he suggested a strategy involving local solutions, with small scale technology that was appropriate to the needs of the community it was intended for. The term he used for this thinking was "Intermediate Technology" based on the needs and skills possessed by the people of developing countries.

With these ideas in mind Schumacher set up an advisory centre in 1966 to promote the use of efficient labour intensive techniques that was called "Intermediate Technology". The group started by promoting the documentation and assembly of any data that could be found relating to intermediate technologies and techniques. As the organisation grew requests for technical advice and information about specific tools and techniques increased so an enquiry service was set up which utilised voluntary experts from academic and research institutions, industry and government specifically for the purpose.

Soon ITDG had created panels for Agriculture, Building, Co-operatives, Education and Training, Food Processing, Water, Power, Rural Health, and Women in Development and was providing services to organisations such as the ODA, the World Bank, etc, on appropriate technology. The group began to expand its project involvement, which led it opening offices in developing countries.

In 2005 ITDG changed its name to Practical action, and now it now employs 300 staff in four continents, and has worked in over 60 countries. Practical Action recently published People and Technology: transforming lives, a new group strategy for 2007-12, and it is aiming to become the leading authority on the use of technology to reduce poverty in developing countries. The Schumacher Centre for Technology and Development is to evolve as a national and international centre for knowledge and expertise on technology, poverty reduction and the environment.

Practical Action has focused on reducing poverty through the use of technology, and there are many interwoven themes with what they do and sustainability. The powerful words of Shumacher's vision are still at the heart of this worthy organisation.

http://practicalaction.org/

Engineers Without Borders UK

EWB-UK is a national organisation with a goal to facilitate human development through engineering. It was started in 2005 by a group of students from Cambridge University who all shared an interest in issues of poverty reduction and sustainability, and wanted to put their engineering skills to good use towards these aims. They began by organising talks and presentations informing their fellow students about rates of poverty, environmental degradation, and technical solutions to these problems through engineering. Placements were organised to developing countries to implement engineering designs working with partner NGO's.

The organisation has grown from a university society to a nationwide charity that has inspired and trained a multitude of young engineers and worked on a diverse range of projects internationally.

EWB-UK's key ideas are as follows:

  * Holistic Engineering - working with an interdisciplinary approach that takes into consideration the local knowledge, economy, culture and environment.

  * Active Partnerships - building long term relationships and working in collaboration with communities and local organisations

  * People Participation - believing in demand-led development and participatory change.

  * Small Footprint - Adopting a sustainable use of natural resources and minimising any impact to the local environment, biodiversity or global climate.

  * Appropriate Technology - Adapting existing low-risk technology and applying modern engineering methods.

The operations of EWB-UK are divided into the following sections:

  * Placements - arranging 3 month to 1 year placements for students to work with NGO's in developing countries and in the UK to gain experience in international development and implementing practically skills gained at university.

  * Training - facilitating practical training courses for engineering students about international development and sustainability

  * Research - Coordinating NGO's with a need for technical research with universities and students that have access to equipment and funds to complete the research

  * Education - Advising on course structure of university degrees to include more about international development and sustainability

  * Outreach - running engaging workshops in schools based on the aims of the organisation

Within these operations, EWB-UK's work is divided into communities of practice, covering Energy, Water and Sanitation, Shelter, Transport, ICT and Health.

Most UK universities now have an EWB-UK society which organises its own events, talks, trips and projects. It's not essential to be an engineer to join these societies, which reflects the diverse skills required in the area of development. There is also a professional network for practitioners, experts and industry members from related fields to get involved.

As discussed in Chapter 9 - Social, environmental issues are often interlinked with social issues, and an organisation such as EWB-UK, by focusing on projects to reduce poverty in developing world will similarly be advocates of environmentally sustainable technologies.

http://www.ewb-uk.org

## Individual Case Studies

The individual stories listed here are to demonstrate that there is no single path to a career in sustainability, and the fact that roles, positions, focuses and motivations all change throughout a career. They also demonstrate the diverse roles and opportunities available in the field of sustainability.

Steven Hunt, International Energy Coordinator, Practical Action

Four years after graduating from the University of Glasgow in Product Design Engineering, Steven left his job with a technology development company for a placement with EWB-UK on Slum Networking at the Alang Shipbreaking Yards in India. Shortly afterwards, he also did a part-time placement with Shelter Centre in Cambridge looking at emergency shelter, which led on to a job in small wind turbines with XCO2.

A year later, Steven started a Masters in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge. At the same time joined the National Executive of EWB- UK, establishing the Professional Network as a community of professionals, academics and practitioners. Steven soon got a job as an energy specialist for Practical Action Consulting focusing on energy access in developing countries around the world – from cook stoves to treadle pumps, from Madagascar to Azerbaijan.

Steven also served as a trustee of EWB-UK for two years during which time he established a series of collaborations with Practical Action, including a partnership on a series of placements for EWB-UK members. It has been a great success, with volunteers making great and diverse contributions to Practical Action while gaining experience of working in development. He's also been involved with providing briefs for the Research Programme and is a speaker for the Training Programme.

Steven has taken up the role of international energy co-ordinator at Practical Action, and is also currently seconded part time to the UK Department for International Development as Energy Advisor. At DFID, Steven is developing a new results-based incentive system to accelerate off-grid energy markets for products accessible to poor people in developing countries – hopefully creating the incentives for more innovators and entrepreneurs to apply themselves to the issue of energy poverty.

Kath Pasteur, currently initiating a community woodland

As a child I was never quite sure what I wanted to "do when I grew up". When asked by a friend of my mums aged about 10, apparently I said I wanted to be a gypsy! By the time I got to 18 that career choice wasn't going to impress the parents so I applied to university to study psychology. I took a year out first to see a bit of the world and during that year I had the opportunity to go to Uganda for a month. I couldn't get over how green and lush the country was! My images of Africa were based on the Band Aid video during the Sahel famine in the mid-1980s, i.e. desert and hungry people. This didn't quite add up.

I went home wanting to study agriculture but didn't think I would get on a course without a science A level, so I switched to a geography degree which had a focus on developing country agriculture and global political economy. I didn't feel qualified enough with just a bachelor's degree so I went straight on to do an MSc in Rural Resources and Environmental Policy at what was Wye Agricultural College in Kent (now sadly closed down). During that course I heard about an opportunity to apply for a grant to work as a research assistant in Mexico. I obviously needed some overseas experience to get into the world of international development so I found a position doing a study of beekeeping and its role in the farming household economy in Yucatan. Not knowing anything about beekeeping nor being able to speak much more than pigeon Spanish, this was certainly a learning experience! I came home two and a half years later with fluent Spanish and knowing a lot more about rural livelihoods and honey production!

I fell straight into a 5 month Research Assistant job at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), at the University of Sussex and ended up staying there for 9 years!

Mainly I worked on "Sustainable Livelihoods" i.e. promoting a more diversified and integrated approach to supporting the livelihoods of the rural poor. During those years I felt more and more uncomfortable about the un-sustainability of our livelihoods in the north, and saw that change in the policies of developed countries was far more valuable than "aid" to the south. I started doing a lot of voluntary campaigning with the World Development Movement and made more efforts to green up my own lifestyle (not flying unless for work, buying local food, home composting, etc.).

Though I loved living in Brighton, I never felt at home in an academic environment so I finally moved on from IDS and got a job with the charity Practical Action based just outside Rugby. This job involved supporting the international offices to develop and manage projects on livelihoods issues, food security, disaster risk reduction and climate change. I really liked Practical Action's approach which is to strengthen and improve local technologies and skills. So particularly on food issues, we didn't push new seeds and fertilizers, but rather revived local seed diversity and traditional soil and water conservation methods, which are more appropriate to the fragile environments where we were working.

When I joined Practical Action I moved to Leamington Spa and got involved in a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project which produced vegetables for around 120 households. I kept up campaigning through going to the annual Climate Camps and got involved in the local Transition Town initiative. Through doing campaigning at festivals I also got to know people who were living in intentional eco-communities in Somerset and Devon. I started to feel somewhat troubled by being paid a lot to reduce poverty, and flying around the world to work on climate change. I wanted to get out of the office, live more simply and work out what I believed life was about. So after 4 years with Practical Action I simply handed in my notice...

I had some savings so I spent about a year living very cheaply, and doing the things I didn't have time to do when I was working including a 10 day silent meditation course, reading books, helping more at the CSA, learning to draw, taking a campervan trip round Scotland, working at eco-communities like Tinkers Bubble, and spending the summer working at festivals with the "Tin Village" (promoting low impact living). It was great: I loved being outdoors, I loved the freedom to manage my own time, and I loved learning new practical skills. More than anything I valued having the time to think about what I believed in both spiritually and about sustainability. My conclusion was that there are no definitive answers - we should each work out what they mean for ourselves. We need to be informed about the world to make and reassess those judgements, so there is an important role in exchanging and exploring ideas and beliefs (rather than harping on at people about what they should or shouldn't do!). We should be the change we want to see, and hopefully that in it will encourage others to think.

As winter drew in I realised I needed to work again if I was going to keep paying the bills in Leamington. So I put feelers out about freelance work. It was a struggle at first but I trusted that something would come up and sure enough a dream opportunity came my way: a job setting up a community woodland on a derelict site in Leamington. Its only one day a week, so I supplement that with occasional international development consultancy jobs, continue to live cheaply, and take regular trips in my campervan, to satisfy the gypsy spirit in me.

James Curry, Director of a Spanish Renewable Energy Company

In the last year of my undergraduate degree in English Literature and Cultural History, I became increasingly interested in politics. Having grown up in a suburb of London that had been witness to a large anti roads protest, the M11 link road campaign, I began to gravitate to environmental activism. Mid-way through my final year I became involved in the Camp for Climate Action. By the end of my degree I felt that my humanities degree was an opportunity to further my knowledge and understanding about the world, and that now it important to test these ideas through practical applications. Having finished my degree I then took a 9 week course in Sustainable Land Use with Permaculture teacher Patrick Whitefield. This was an important course for me as it helped me develop a holistic, land based approach to sustainability and personal autonomy.

At the Camp for Climate Action at Drax power station I met an engineer offering to teach a wind turbine building course. With funding from the Workers Education Association I organized a week long course in the construction of 2.4m, 500w axial flux wind turbine, at an arts centre in East London, the 491 gallery. Organising the course was a big leap beyond anything that I had done before, having very little practical skills or knowledge, but I felt particularly empowered by the experience of non-hierarchical organisation at the Climate Camp that summer. I also understood the importance of skilling up in order to challenge capitalism and protect the planet. The course fostered a small group wanting to build more wind turbines, and I subsequently built another two; the first for an ecological community in the South West of England, and the second for the London neighborhood of the Camp for Climate Action, in Heathrow.

Having now built three wind turbines I realized that I needed to undergo some further technical training and started an MSc in Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies at the Centre for Alternative Technology, in Wales. Having previously studied a humanities degree, it was a difficult transition to a science based masters but I persevered.

At the second Climate Camp I met members of V3 Power, a Nottingham based workers cooperative. They invited me to help teach a course building wind turbines, which offered me the opportunity to work with qualified engineers. This experience was invaluable for learning practical skills and gaining general engineering knowledge.

Following on from my experience with V3 and my Masters, I then took up a job with the Spanish based, British charity, Sunseed Desert Technology. I worked as their Appropriate Technology coordinator, maintaining their electrical off grid renewable systems, solar hot water, wood burning masonry stoves and a hydraulic ram pump. I have stayed on in the area and I now run a company installing off grid renewable energy systems.

"Sustainability for me is a quest for personal empowerment through the grass roots provision of food, energy, clean water, housing etc. From the very small, like saving seeds, to the very large, building one's own house, anything that we can do that helps us to empower the commonality through harmony with nature bring us closer to this goal, no matter how small.

To end with a quote: "I am only one. I can only do what one can do. But what one can do, I will do!" Happy grub-grabbing! (Better than money grabbing any day!) - John Seymour (The new complete book of self-sufficiency)

Ellie Griffiths, Trustee, EWB-UK

Ellie Griffiths is currently a Mechanical Engineer with the architectural and engineering practice, Arup Associates. She previously studied for her mechanical engineering masters at Nottingham University. Ellie became involved in Engineers Without Borders UK through her University branch, she later became branch President and ran numerous activities including workshops, projects and outreach programs.

Ellie went on an EWB placement while at university, to work on the implementation of improved cook stoves in rural India. She established strong relationships during her trip which lead to a collaboration for her final year project, based on cook stove technology, research and design. She followed up this work with a further trip to India to work with the social enterprise for 3 months. Within EWB she is currently working with the placements and branch support teams.

Ellie's main interests and passions are in sustainability in human development and climate, which are both conflicting and congruent with an unhealthy love for travel.

## Further Reading

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)  
http://www.wbcsd.org/home.aspx

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development.

Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP)  
www.gvep.org   
GVEP is a voluntary partnership that brings together developing and industrialised country governments, public and private organizations, multilateral institutions, consumers and others in an effort to ensure access to modern energy services by the poor.

Wastenet  
http://wastenet.defra.gov.uk/   
Wastenet is a freely available knowledge portal for those either conducting research on or working in the field of waste management.

Stop Climate Chaos  
www.stopclimatechaos.org   
Practical Action is a member of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, the UK's largest group of people dedicated to action on climate change and limiting its impact on the world's poorest communities, with a combined supporter base of more than 4 million. The coalition consists of more than 70 organisations, including environment and development charities, unions, faith, community and women's groups.

Schumacher College  
www.schumachercollege.org.uk   
Schumacher College in Devon, UK, was founded in 1991 on the conviction that a new vision is needed for society, its values and its relationship to the earth. Over the last decade the college has become a centre of excellence and established an international reputation for the inspiration, quality and breadth of its teaching.

PISCES  
pisces.or.ke  
PISCES (Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Security) is a five-year DFID-funded research project aimed at providing new policy-relevant knowledge and innovation around the use of bioenergy. This will lead to more sustainable energy practices and increased access to energy for the rural and urban poor in the target countries of Kenya, Tanzania, India and Sri Lanka, and beyond.

DEW Point  
www.dewpoint.org.uk   
The DEW Point Resource Centre generates and disseminates knowledge on behalf of DFID staff and their development partners in environment, water resources, water and sanitation and climate change.

Sparknet  
www.sparknet.info   
A formal knowledge network on sustainable energy for low-income households in rural areas in Southern and Eastern Africa. Key themes include household energy and health, household energy and gender, and household energy and forestry.

Experience Development  
www.experiencedevelopment.org   
A website for students that brings together comprehensive information on the many different aspects of international development.

The Schumacher Society - Schumacher UK  
www.schumacher.org.uk   
Inspired by the philosopher, economist and author E.F. Schumacher, Schumacher UK (The Schumacher Society) promotes human scale sustainable development in Britain and abroad. Some of the areas covered include: sustainable development, green issues, ecology, conservation, economy, health, education, philosophy, spirituality, architecture, energy and technology.

The Soil Association  
www.soilassociation.org   
The Soil Association is the UK's leading campaigning and certification organisation for organic food and farming, founded in 1946 by a group of farmers, scientists and nutritionists who were concerned about the way our food was produced.

Green Books  
www.greenbooks.co.uk   
Green Books is a publishing company whose aim is to inform and inspire the general reader about ecological, spiritual and cultural issues of our time.

New Economics Foundation  
www.neweconomics.org   
The New Economics Foundation (NEF) works to construct a new economy centred on people and the environment. Founded in 1986, it is now one of the UK's most creative and effective independent think tanks, combining research, advocacy, training and practical action.

Resurgence  
www.resurgence.org   
Resurgence is a bi-monthly magazine of vision and action. Resurgence brings its readers a unique blend of news and views on a range of topics that includes ecology, development, education, health, science and politics, together with art, culture and spirituality.

Agromisa – Centre for Small-Scale Sustainable Agriculture  
www.agromisa.org   
The Agromisa Foundation aim is to strengthen the social and economic position of the underprivileged rural population in the south. To achieve its objectives, Agromisa supplies information and advice on small-scale, sustainable agriculture and related topics to individuals and organisations.

WOT – Working Group On Development Techniques  
www.wot.utwente.nl   
WOT is active in the field of small-scale sustainable energy for developing countries.

Energy Institute  
http://www.energyinst.org/home   
International (UK based) professional body for energy industries

EnergyUK  
http://www.energy-uk.org.uk/   
Forum for UK energy industry, government and other stakeholders on sustainable energy

Envirotech.org.uk  
Website concerned with embedding sustainability principles into engineering and construction

International Energy Agency  
http://www.iea.org/   
Acts as energy policy advisor to 26 Member countries

Renewable Energy Association (REA)  
http://www.r-e-a.net/   
The Renewable Energy Association represents renewable energy producers and promotes the use of all forms of renewable energy in the UK.

RenewableUK  
http://www.bwea.com/   
RenewableUK is the trade and professional body for the UK wind and marine renewables industries. (Formally the BWEA - British Wind Energy Association).

SCPinfonet  
http://scpinfonet.defra.gov.uk/   
SCPinfonet is a free, online service providing easy search and discovery of knowledge related to Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), provided as part of Defra's Green Economy Programme.

##  References

1. We are all leaders, Satish Kumar

We Are All Leaders features in Resurgence issue 264, January/February 2011.

This article is reprinted courtesy of Resurgence & Ecologist. To buy Resurgence & Ecologist, read further articles online or find out about The Resurgence Trust, visit: http://www.resurgence.org

All rights to this article are reserved to Resurgence & Ecologist, if you wish to republish or make use of this work you must contact the copyright owner to obtain permission.

2. Caring for the Planet, Satish Kumar

Reprinted with permission, Available At: http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/3094

Accessed 1st August 2012

3. 5 Strategies to Finding a Sustainability Job, Bob Willard

Reprinted with permission,

Available at:   http://sustainabilityadvantage.com/2010/07/13/5-strategies-to-finding-a-sustainability-job/

Accessed: 2nd August 2012

4. Careers in Sustainability, David Brent

Available at:  http://davidbent.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/careers_in_sus/

Accessed: 2nd August 2012

Creative Commons License 3.0

## Module Assessment

The purpose of the assessment is to demonstrate your awareness of the issues raised in this module. Also, as education has been a recurring theme of the solutions to the problems presented in this module, it is intended to give you practice in researching, collating and presenting information to your peers and thereby raising awareness about an issue that you feel strongly about.

The assessment will involve creating a learning resource based on the theme of this module (i.e. sustainability and engineering). The learning resource must be a poster or a presentation which will be presented to all other students who have completed this module at a one day event at the University of Nottingham. The presentation must be maximum 10 minutes long, after which you should answer any questions about the information you have researched.

Suggestions for what the poster or presentation could cover are below:

Introduction to the subject of choice

  * Outline of current world wide / local situation

  * Past and predicted future trends

  * Reasons for the specific focus on the area you have chosen

What are the problems with the current situation?

  * Indicators towards unsustainability

  * Reasons for getting to the current situation

  * Economic, social and environmental factors, links between them

What solutions exist?

  * Government policy, organisations or individual actions

  * Case studies of any of the above

Conclusions

  * What are the best/ worst case scenarios for the future?

  * What is your personal opinion of what could be done to increase the sustainability of the topic you have chosen?

Further Reading

  * List any relevant websites, videos, or online teaching resources that you have found useful.

You can focus on a wide and general topic or on a very specific localised issue. Your subject should in some way be related to engineering and sustainability. It doesn't have to be a subject covered specifically in this module, however if you do choose a subject from one of the chapters it should be covered in more depth than it already has. You could focus more on a problem or on a solution. You could even suggest a solution that doesn't exist yet!

Suggested titles:

  * Can the UK support itself entirely from renewable energy?

  * A case study of a low impact housing community in Wales

  * Environmental consequences of waste electronic goods

  * China's use of copper

  * The embodied energy of electric cars

  * Engineering solutions for reducing poverty (energy, water, healthcare etc)

  * Wave/ Tidal Energy

  * A summary of current predictions for peak oil

  * The Transition Network - building resilient communities

  * Permaculture in engineering - using nature as a design aid

Poster Guidelines

  * A3 format

  * Include pictures, text, charts and graphs

  * Flow diagrams can explain processes concisely

Presentation Guidelines

  * Information presented clearly

  * Include text, charts, graphs and pictures

  * Ideally should make sense without needing a presenter - i.e. can be a useful standalone online resource

General Guidelines

  * Posters or presentations that are of a high standard will be included as part of the online learning resources for this module in U-Now, and will be available for future students to use as part of their studies.

  * For this to be possible, any pictures, text (that is not your own), charts or graphs used from the internet should be appropriately referenced.

  * Try to use resources with a creative commons license where possible (this will make it possible to include your work as part of the online resource)

  * To achieve this use the internet search engine as follows: "your search term" + creative commons and look for the following logo:

This means that the author has been attributed, the item is non-commercial and it is cleared for sharing ('share-alike').

More information about Creative Commons Licensing:

http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/

