Suchergebnisse

There is an increasing awareness that climate change is caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases that mainly originate from the use of fossil fuels. In the EU member states as well as in other parts of the world, energy policies are being developed that discriminate fossil fuels and /or promote the use of renewable energy sources. Together with increasing oil prices, the result is a steady increase in the demand for renewable energy sources, both for heat and power production and to a varying degree also for vehicle fuels. A transition to an economy that is more based on use of renewable biomass than on fossil fuels is initiated. As a consequence, conflicts between economic production of food, fodder and fuels and various ecosystem services (biodiversity, social and cultural values, etc) that are provided by forest and farmland are increasing as well. Hence, a developed thinking on how to balance between these services is desirable. This report summarizes the conclusions from two workshops on sustainability criteria in relation to tried and/or existing implemented production systems and describes general principles for a sustainable production of biofuels from agriculture and forestry in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, the international community is striving to establish a coordinated system to prevent fatal climate change in a global sense. As a result of such changes in business environments, a new issue, sustainability, has recently presented a paradigm shift and new research opportunity in which the theories and practices in traditional production and operations management are being reinterpreted and reapplied in relation to this emerging issue. Under this research background, we consider an optimal emission-trading problem under a cap-and-trade (CAT) emission regulation when the customers&rsquo ; demand is given as an arbitrary probability distribution. Such a CAT approach to reduce the amount of emissions is a normative system for the sustainable production of manufacturing firms, which is also closely related to a well-known open innovation in literature of inventory management. Then, we formulate two stochastic inventory optimization models, which can be applied immediately for two famous CAT policies that exist in reality. In particular, our objective is to draw theoretical and practical implications for baseline credit emission regulations, which are innovative and government-led emission regulation policies, with a well-known newsvendor analysis. For our analytical results, we first show that our objective functions are piecewise linear and (quasi)-concave. Thus, it is found that there exists a unique optimal solution to the problem. Second, we successfully obtain the closed-form optimal solutions for the two models considered. Finally, we conduct a sensitivity analysis through a comparative static analysis to examine how the model parameters can affect the optimal solution in each model. All these analytical results and implications are consistent with previous studies in the literature, as well as with our insights for the models.

The European Union has adopted Agenda 2000 reform package, which defines the extent of agricultural production, whose concept of the production of biologically safe food and environmental and economic impact. Proper fertilization is one of the preconditions for the production of healthy food. Therefore, in recent decades, increasing attention is paid to the results of biological nitrogen fixation. This is a natural process which is not only significant but also in a biological practical sense. In the production of basic agricultural crops (corn, wheat and soybean) reduced consumption of mineral fertilizers is very important for the economic viability of production and environmental protection. Numerous studies have shown that the application of biofertilizers reduced use of mineral fertilizers to 60 kg.ha -1 and influences the increase in the quality of land for the plant.

One of the essential drivers of sustainable change for the circular economy is natural resource scarcity. The key development in the area of sustainable production and consumption that seeks to limit or even, ideally, stop continuous extraction of natural resources, is the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) framework. The C2C framework is based on the book Cradle to Cradle by Michael Braungart and William McDonough first published in 2002. The circular economy also poses threats to conventional business and production as in its ideal form, circular production should not mean churning out even more supposedly 'circular', 'sustainable', or 'green' products but fully re-using materials. The products need to be made not only to last but to have, at least ideally, all reusable parts. This is no easy task. Overt optimism of some of the circular economy promoters, such as The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, needs to be tempered with realism and realization for the potential for greenwashing. Even more problematically, the concept of the circular economy is intended to align sustainability with economic growth – just as an equally problematic concept of sustainable development (and the associated education for sustainable development or ESD) does. While the European Union states that the circular economy will "foster sustainable economic growth", critical scholars have noted that without radical degrowth in the economy (and population) circular economy is nothing but a new word for greenwashing. This paper will discuss how to teach students to think critically and pragmatically about the challenges and opportunities of the circular economy.

Während die Gestaltung globaler Produktionsnetzwerke in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten hauptsächlich an den Zieldimensionen Kosten, Geschwindigkeit und Flexibilität ausgerichtet war, gewinnt die ökologischen Nachhaltigkeit als weitere Zieldimension zunehmend an Bedeutung. Gepaart mit einer steigenden Dynamik im Umfeld produzierender Unternehmen, ist eine transparente, datenbasierte Netzwerkgestaltung essenziell, um erfolgreich zu sein. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert ein datengetriebenes Vorgehen mithilfe des Softwaretools "Miori" Network Design, das die Gestaltung des Produktionsnetzwerkes sowohl unter klassischen Zieldimensionen, als auch unter Nachhaltigkeitsdimensionen erlaubt.

While the design of global production networks in the past decades was mainly oriented towards the target dimensions of costs, speed and flexibility, ecological sustainability is becoming increasingly important as a further target dimension. Coupled with an increasing dynamic in the environment of manufacturing companies, a transparent, data-based network design is essential to be successful. This paper presents a data-driven approach with the help of the software tool Miori Network Design, which enables the design of the production network according to both classical and sustainability dimensions.