Displays

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) require increased hydropower electricity production to reach SDG 7. However, a balance between related positive synergies and negative trade-offs needs to be found. So far there has been a strong focus on the technical development potential (SDG 7), and the positive synergies of hydropower, for example in relation to SDG 13 (Climate change). However, hydropower can also cause, for instance, biodiversity impacts, leading to a negative biodiversity trade-off with SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation) and SDG 15 (Life on land). Although conservation of biodiversity has been identified as a key parameter for sustainable development, global assessments accounting for site specific biodiversity trade-offs of hydropower sites are still lacking.

To fill this research gap, we performed the first global and reservoir explicit assessment of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity impacts of 2000 possible future hydropower reservoirs. We adapted the latest spatially explicit impact assessment methods available from the field of life cycle assessment, with a high-resolution and location-specific technical assessment of future economic hydropower potentials (Gernaat et al., Nature Energy 2017). More specially we collected site-specific environmental information from geographic information system databases to quantify potential reservoir-specific, net land occupation, net water consumption and methane emissions. Subsequently, we quantified the related terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity impact in units of potentially disappeared fraction of species (PDF).

Our results show that future hydropower electricity production can have a spatially highly variable biodiversity impact (varying by orders of magnitude) which can interfere with SDG 6 and SDG 15. Furthermore, we show that careful selection of reservoirs on a macro level has a large potential to limit biodiversity impacts. Thus, sustainable hydropower development requires an assessment of potential biodiversity impacts.  This in turn means, that if mitigating climate change for SDG 13 is the main motivation for increased hydropower production, as it can score favorable in studies comparing GHG emissions, it is likely that potential biodiversity impacts are overlooked. However, in order to move towards overall sustainability, taking biodiversity impacts into account next to climate change and other impacts, is of utmost importance.

How to cite: Dorber, M., Arvesen, A., Gernaat, D., and Verones, F.: Minimizing biodiversity trade-offs of future global hydropower reservoirs by strategic site selection, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-18, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-18, 2020.

Sustainability trade-offs in the spatial allocation of future onshore wind generation capacity – an empiric case study for Germany

Abstract

The expansion of renewable energies is a key requirement to the global climate protection efforts. However, renewables themselves can be associated with negative local effects. A prominent example is the deployment of wind energy. Different sustainability criteria – e.g. the mitigation of adverse impacts on human health and ecosystems and the generation costs for renewable electricity from wind power, may call for different spatial allocations of wind turbines. As the optimal siting of wind turbines differs with regard to the individual sustainability criteria, this can imply trade-offs between the different sustainability criteria.
Therefore we developed an approach to identify and quantify how significant these trade-offs potentially are and to what extent they depend on the spatial allocation of wind turbines as well as on the overall level of wind power deployment.
Based on a spatially explicit GIS modelling using high resolution wind speed, settlement and ecological data for Germany, we calculate the potential trade-offs. Using a set of more than 100,000 technically and legally potential sites for modern wind turbines across Germany in a greenfield approach, the numerical optimization of these data identifies on the one hand optimal sites for each sustainability criteria in an expansion scenario for 2030. These different optimal spatial allocations can then be compared against each other for a basic trade-off analysis. Additionally, the trade-off analysis can be elaborated by the calculation of pareto-frontiers as well as a Gini-like coefficient that quantifies the potential trade-off between sustainability criteria in a paired comparison of sustainability criteria.
The results show that trade-offs are inevitable giving the required and projected capacity expansion for onshore wind power. But the potential trade-offs among the different sustainability criteria differ significantly with Gini-like coefficients ranging from 0.13 up to 0.69 for depending on the selected criteria in a paired comparison. This underlines that the approach and the obtained results are highly relevant for the management of sustainability trade-offs in future.

In general, the developed approach covers multiple relevant criteria and provides a framework for the empirical analysis and assessment of trade-offs associated with any spatially relevant energy-infrastructure and sustainability criteria. The approach can also be transferred to other application where trade-offs between different sustainability criteria have to be investigated and managed. And finally, as performed for the case study region of Germany, the obtained results can likewise be reintroduced and visualized using GIS in order to verify and further assess the spatially explicit results.

Index Terms:  spatial planning, trade-offs, wind energy, GIS applications, integrated assessment, allocation optimization

How to cite: Tafarte, P. and Lehmann, P.: Sustainability trade-offs in the spatial allocation of future onshore wind generation capacity – an empiric case study for Germany, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-9651, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9651, 2020.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a framework towards a more sustainable future.  Although each goal can be targeted separately, the greatest benefit is to be had in ensuring that projects exploit synergies between different goals, are developed with an interdisciplinary perspective, and integrate different stakeholders across academia, business, government, NGOs, and communities.

In combination, Renewable Energy Systems (RES) and distributed ‘smart’ energy networks (SEN) provide opportunities to drive down CO₂ emissions, clearly addressing SDG13, ‘climate action’.  However, significant potential exists to positively contribute to a wider suite of goals as well as the potential to negatively impact other aspects. Addressing these tensions and opportunities requires development of a detailed understanding of the full societal, economic and environmental impacts of such developments.

Such integrated renewable energy systems and smart energy networks are in the early stages of development.  Taking a ‘living laboratory approach’ enables the development and live-testing of new energy systems, including the opportunity to consider full life cycle assessment impacts and benefits, as well as investigate and co-develop interactions with end-users.  Here we outline the potential of one of Europe’s largest ‘at scale’ multi-vector smart energy systems, developed as a ‘living laboratory’ at Keele University in the UK, to demonstrate an integrated approach to addressing the UN’s SDGs through integrated RES-SEN systems. The scale and scope of the project provides the opportunity for the detailed analysis required to provide a model of a scalable, integrated RES-SEN approach as part of an evolving energy landscape, where multi-vector renewables, and distributed energy and storage provide new models for decarbonisation, whilst also contributing more widely to the UN’s SDGs.

This project represents an ambitious and innovative demonstrator programme that brings together multiple stakeholders to explore the potential for addressing the core SDGs of ‘climate action’, ‘affordable and clean energy’, ‘sustainable cities and communities’, ‘decent work and economic growth’, and ‘industry, innovation and infrastructure’, while exploring the additional potential impacts and benefits to ‘quality education’, ‘life on land’ and ‘partnerships for the goal’. The programme of work focusses on technical developments, societal adoption and full economic life-cycle assessment, which combined are developing a blue print for the integration of RES-SEN technologies across the evolving energy landscape by working in partnership with key industrial and commercial partners to contribute to a wide array of the UN’s SDGs.  

How to cite: Fogwill, C., Robinson, Z., Healey, D., George, S., Catney, P., Omrod, M., Fan, Z., Glanville, H., Cao, J., Davenward, B., Matthews, P., Hulme, A., Dean, A., and Shaw, I.: The role of ‘living laboratories’ in unlocking the potential of renewable energy and smart distributed energy systems to address the UN SDGs , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-17631, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-17631, 2020.

Driven by the expected population growth, the world faces now the challenge of meeting energy demands of about 9 billion people on the next decades and avoid dangerous climate change effects. In this context, Renewable Energy Systems (RES) are a key strategy to decarbonize the power sector and contribute to the climate change mitigation targets. In the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, IPCC calls attention to possible trade-offs, adverse side-effects and implications to sustainable development that the large-scale deployment of bioenergy may cause. A comprehensive understanding of the sustainability profile along the entire life-cycle of electricity production is fundamental if we want to realize the transition to cleaner technologies in the energy sector. In this study we analyze the water, land and climate impacts of electricity production systems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We focus our analysis in the electricity production from sugarcane straw in Brazil, since there is a great opportunity for better using this lignocellulosic material for bioenergy applications. We relate appropriate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) indicators to multiple SDGs, considering attainable and potential sugarcane yields, derived from agroclimatic modeling. When discussing the sustainability of bioenergy production, a broader sustainability analysis, as provided by the SDGs, can help to identify water, land and climate nexus and suggest possible technological solutions for minimizing possible trade-offs among the different impacts. Our analysis demonstrates the nexus implications of electricity production from sugarcane biomass to the context of the SDGs, as well as the spatially explicit environmental implications of electricity production form sugarcane biomass.

Keywords: renewable energy systems, life cycle assessment, climate change mitigation, sustainable development

How to cite: Souza, N., Hernandes, T., Bruno, K. M. B., Henzler, D. S., and Cavalett, O.: Water, land and climate nexus of electricity from biomass, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-10330, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10330, 2020.

Through the promotion of the past five years, some positive signs have emerged in the progress of some SDGs. However, there is still a large gap between the speed and scale of sustainable transition compared to the extent needed to achieve the SDGs in 2030. United Nations has called on governments and international organizations to propose appropriate SDGs Acceleration Actions to reverse the current unfavorable situation. But before moving forward to more actions, it is important to know which SDGs are urgently needed to be addressed and the matching between the existing actions and priority needs. In this study, we attempt to reveal the SDGs that need to be focused on in promoting SDG Acceleration Actions in terms of expert inquiries, the current sustainable development level, the relationship among 17 SDGs, and the comparison between planetary boundaries and SDGs. We found that there is an obvious conflict between the boost of the SDGs and the control of the biophysical boundaries. And if considering achieving sustainability within the planetary boundaries, we should focus on SDG2, SDG9, SDG14, SDG15, the conflict between these SDGs and multiple biophysical indicators such as CO₂ emissions needs to be reconciled, and the gap between average and highest efficiency utilization efficiency needs to be narrowed. Compared to our results, existing actions are not enough for the key SDGs we screened. This study could be a step forward to optimizing the overall arrangement of SDG Acceleration Actions and implementing SDG policy effectively.

Keywords: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); SDGs Acceleration Actions; Planetary Boundaries; Sustainability

How to cite: Hua, T. and Zhao, W.: Can SDG Acceleration Actions promote the key SDGs?, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-687, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-687, 2020.

Building sustainable cities, as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN, requires sustainable urbanization as well as reducing per capita environmental impacts of living in cities. As a result of a growing population and constrained availability of building space, countries such as Switzerland are faced with increasing pressure on their land resources. They will need to considerably densify in existing urbanized areas to prevent urban expansion. Even though Swiss regulation promote inward settlement development and the creation of compact settlements, only limited analysis is available on the densification potentials combined with sustainability implications. We develop a geospatial explicit analysis framework which allows to up-scale the assessment and evaluation of densification potentials for the whole of Switzerland. An energy simulation tool is used for exploring impacts of different densification strategies on a district scale with respect to energy consumption.

How to cite: Eggimann, S. and Orehounig, K.: Urban densification potentials and energy impacts in Switzerland, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-6579, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-6579, 2020.

Since GTGP (Grain to Green Project) has implemented in 1999, soil erosion and vulnerable habitat have substantially improved along with the enhancement of human living standards. Under vision of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how residents evaluate sustainable development status plays important role in regulating objectives of the policy. Yet, few researches involved. In this study, we conducted interview survey to investigate the subjective viewpoints on SDG and ES. Overall, we collected 667 valid questionnaires from 13 counties (districts) in Yan’an city. Results indicated that environmental quality has been improved, which included improvement of water quality, amelioration of soil erosion, increase of vegetation types and spiritual acquirement, as well as maintenances of species diversity habitat quality. As for living standard, although respondents’ a grain output decreased, the income not decreased because of ecological compensation. Besides, farmers can increase their income by engaging in the tertiary industry. With regards to SDG awareness, there are trade-off between protecting biodiversity (SDG 15) and economic growth (SDG 8). In addition, farmers' awareness of environmental protection and social responsibility have been significantly strengthened. We conclude that, although perceptions of ES have showed a significant improvement, there are still gaps hindering achievement of regional SDGs, which reflected by lacking collective identification on economic and environment aspects.

How to cite: zhou, A. and Zhao, W.: Residents' awareness of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) after Grain to Green Project implementation in Loess Plateau, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-905, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-905, 2020.

Electricity production from biomass has the potential to significantly contribute to the share of renewable energy in the global power mix with lesser environmental impact than non-renewable resources. The production of bioenergy from forest biomass residues is currently increasing in Portugal, mainly as a consequence of concerns related to climate change and forest fires.  In Portugal, the annual production of residual biomass from forest logging is estimated at 0.8-1.2 million dry tons per year, and about 47-58% of these residues come from eucalypt. 

This study evaluates the environmental impacts resulting from electricity production in Portugal using eucalypt logging residues (composed of branches, foliage and tops) and considering two types of technologies: grate furnaces and fluidised bed furnaces. This assessment was performed using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, a methodology that evaluates the environmental impacts entire life cycle of a product or process (from the extraction of the raw materials until its end-of-life), allowing to identify the most significant stages and processes along the life cycle, and supporting by this way the decision and policy-making.

Two alternative scenarios for biomass-to-energy conversion technologies were simulated: grate furnace and fluidised bed furnace. The functional unit is the production of electricity from the combustion of eucalypt logging residues equivalent to 1 kWh delivered by the power plant to the Portuguese grid. System boundaries include the following stages: (1) forest management (including site preparation, planting, stand tending and logging); (2) residues collection; and (3) energy conversion (including forest biomass combustion as well as treatment and final destination of wastes). Seven impact categories from the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) are considered: climate change, particulate matter, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication and mineral and fossil resource depletion.

The results show that the forest management stage had a low contribution to the total impact in all impact categories for both technologies under analysis. The only exception is the impact category of mineral and fossil depletion, in which forest management is mainly responsible and which accounts for 92-94% of the total impact for both technologies analysed. The energy conversion is the hotspot in most of the impacts studied (climate change —49-63%, particulate matter —94-95%, photochemical ozone formation —85-88% of, acidification —76-79%, freshwater eutrophication —56-58% and marine eutrophication —70-71% of the total impact) and therefore, this is the stage for which improvements should be primarily establishedestablished for both technologies analysed. In addition, for all impact categories analysed, the fluidised bed presented the smallest environmental impact. Even when the grate furnace efficiency increases and the fluidised bed efficiency decreases in a sensitivity analysis, the fluidised bed has lower impacts than the grate furnace and is a good alternative for implementing new power plants. Further research is needed to analyse the effects of converting the grate technology in Portugal to fluidised bed technology.

How to cite: Quinteiro, P., Pacheco da Costa, T., Tarelho, L., Arroja, L., and Cláudia Dias, A.: Environmental performance of grate furnace and fluidised bed furnace systems to produce electricity from forest biomass residues, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-10478, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10478, 2020.

Tibet Plateau plays an important role in protecting the ecological security of China and even Asia, to ensure its normal and effective ecosystem function, a series of ecological security barrier protection and construction projects have been implemented. The sustainable development goals(SDGs) of the United Nations can provide a broad framework for optimizing and coordinating the ecological security barrier protection and construction projects. The public to the understanding of ecological security barrier projects and sustainable development goals can influence their decision making and participation. We determine public understanding of the projects through its contribution to SDGs. Using the results of department questionnaire in Linzhi City (n=176), we identified nine projects contribution to sustainable development goals and different cognitive patterns for them. Soil and water loss control project and sand control project have more contributions to SDSs , while the contributions of returning grazing to grassland and pest control project and traditional energy substitution project in agricultural and pastoral areas to SDGs are relatively small. Soil and water loss control project is to realize the basic requirements and management goals largest contributor, sand control project is the largest contributor to achieving the expected goals. From the cognitive patterns we see individual differences in participants, but the dominant cognitive patterns among individuals are identified. We put forwards suggestions for optimizing ecological security barrier projects to promote the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable development goals.

How to cite: Liu, X. and Zhao, W.: Public views of ecological security barrier projects contributions towards sustainable development goals in Tibet plateau, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-914, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-914, 2020.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a blueprint for the world’s sustainable development plan throughout 2016 and 2030. It is regrettable that recent reports have shown that it will not be possible to achieve all the goals by 2030 under our current pace. To accelerate SDG implementation, scientists have conducted studies under a variety of perspectives, such as relationships among SDGs, their specific priorities, and necessary transformations. However, there still lacks a systematic approach to promote joint action by countries that can advance SDGs on regional, national, and global scales. To fill this gap, we summarize the relevant articles, reports, and practices in recent years on the ways to promote the implementation of the SDGs. Following this, we propose a systematic approach to combat this issue, namely, “classification–coordination–collaboration”. This approach not only considers relationships among the 17 SDGs and the links among the different management agencies, but it also contains the necessary means to accelerate SDGs. Overall, this approach is expected to promote the participation of countries within the process of global governance, and it will help to ensure that SDGs will realize key breakthroughs over the short-term while achieving sweeping progress over the long run.

How to cite: Zhang, J., Fu, B., Wang, S., and Zhao, W.: Classification–coordination–collaboration: A system approach for advancing sustainable development goals , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-2863, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-2863, 2020.

Renewable energy will play a key role in tranformation of the energy sector to reduce CO₂ emissions. Integrated Assessment Modelling scenarios reaching the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement rely on large scale deployment of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). BECCS are a key contributor to reducing emissions and acheiving net negative emissions in such scenarios. The potentials of large scale BECCS deployment in reaching the 1.5°C target is evaluated using Earth system model simulations in the work presented here. Fully coupled carbon cycle and interactive biogeochemistry is used to assess different rates of BECCS deployment, alongside assuming strong mitigation. BECCS at large scale influence not only the global carbon cycle, but also the feedbacks between the atmosphere and land surface. Changing the land cover to biocrops affects the terrestrial store of carbon, and also the physical properties of the land surface, i.e. biogeophysical forcing, which leads to important feedbacks in the climate system. Renewable energy from BECCS may have implications on several of the SDGs, in particular #13 Climate, #7 Energy, #15 Life on land, as well as #2 Hunger. It is found that it remains a challenge to achieve the 1.5°C target, relying strongly on bioenergy with CCS, and the mitigation potential depends on geografical location, and availability of suitable land areas.

How to cite: Muri, H., Næss, J. S., and Iordan, C. M.: Potential contribution from bioenergy with CCS to SDG13: an Earth system modelling perspective, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-19428, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19428, 2020.

SDGs can be better achieved when more firms are willing to fulfill their CSR and disclose their CSR information. Stakeholder theory argues that corporate stakeholders are one of the most critical driving forces for corporations’ willingness to fulfill their CSR and disclose their performance in CSR. Due to the global trend of advocating sustainable development and green consumerism, more and more corporate stakeholders incorporate enterprises’ efforts in CSR into their investment/procurement decisions. For example, KPMG's survey (2017) indicated that stakeholders had started to view the environmental and social issues such as climate change, water scarcity, and human rights as financial issues rather than non-financial issues. Therefore, corporate stakeholders are incentivized by the global concerns of sustainable development to demand corporations’ disclosure of CSR information and, then, the corporations are incentivized by stakeholders to fulfill their CSR and report the results.

However, currently, CSR information is mainly reported by large or international firms. The key to the success of CSR disclosure scheme is for all firms, mostly small to medium enterprises (SMEs), to be willing to disclose. Nevertheless, many obstacles prevent SMEs from fulfilling CSR. The most concern for SMEs is the costs and efforts. SMEs do not know what to do and what to disclose and, thus, they imagine that CSR is a costly, heavy burden. Therefore, it is critical for firms to have better strategies for efficient and effective disclosure of CSR.

In this study, we argue that the content and extent of the disclosed information should be aligned with stakeholders’ desired information. Furthermore, we argue that the strategies for CSR reporting should be sector-specific because stakeholders in different sectors desire different sector-specific CSR information that is associated with sector-specific characteristics and impacts on sustainability.

In terms of methodology, we identify the “Topics” and Topic-specific “Disclosures” (according to GRI Standards) that are most disclosed in the CSR reports of the top corporations of that sector. Because the top corporations face the most attention from their stakeholders, the current CSR information disclosed by these top corporations can serve as the reference for forming “effective” CSR reporting strategies. Thus, the first step of the methodology is to obtain sector-specific statistics based on the top corporations of that sector.

For developing “efficient” CSR reporting strategies, we differentiate the “Topics” and Topic-specific “Disclosures” into three Groups based on their disclosing rates, which are calculated by how many firms among the referenced/sample corporations disclose each Topic and its associated Disclosures. The three groups provide different sizes of firms different minimum (i.e., efficient) numbers of Topics/Disclosures reported, which reflect mainly the sector-specific characteristics. Therefore, the second step of this methodology is to differentiate the relevant Topics/Disclosures into three Groups. The third and last step is to analyze the information in each Group and to form the sector-specific strategies for CSR reporting based on the insights obtained from the analyses. Strategies developed using this methodology will be proposed. We shall apply this methodology to the international construction sector.

How to cite: Ho, S. P. and You, C.-Y.: Better Achievement of SDGs Through Developing Better Firm Strategies for Efficient and Effective Disclosure of Corporate Social Responsibility, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-20878, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-20878, 2020.