Special Issue on Economic, Environmental, and Social Sustainability Evaluation of Bio-Based Products: Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy
To limit the negative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions and alleviate climate change, it is imperative for the society to adopt a bio-based and lower carbon economy. Shifting from fossil fuel-based economy to a bio-based economy is pivotal to avert climate change. Concentrated efforts need to be in place to help understand the development and to scale up the potential of these novel bio-based technologies. As extensive research has been underway to produce bioenergy and bioproducts, it is imperative to understand the relevant metrics that determine the feasibility of developing these bio-based systems at scale. To understand the impacts of producing renewable energy and sustainable bioproducts at scale, it is critical to determine the advantages, drawbacks, and potential solutions for commercial scale deployment of these technologies.
This research topic is focused on elucidating the economic, environmental, and social assessment tools that contribute to identify the main drivers and bottlenecks associated with the development and deployment of low carbon systems at scale to facilitate a faster transition into a global circular carbon economy. This will also aid in understanding and advancing the readiness level of different technologies needed to be adopted to transition into a low carbon economy. The focus of the collection is on the advancements and contributions on process scale up as well as economic, environmental, and social sustainability assessment of these systems to:
- Compare and quantify performance differences of these alternative systems with respect to corresponding fossil-based systems
- Determine major hot spots and challenges in the entire supply chain associated with the scale-up of novel low carbon energy and environmental systems
- Design ways to reduce the time required to scale up the processes and deploy them at scale
- Screen for different low carbon technologies and determine the optimal ones with the largest potential of providing economic, environmental, and social benefits
- Understand the uncertainties and sensitivities associated with different process parameters and their impacts on the scalability of low carbon solutions
- Quantify the impacts of spatial and temporal variations pertaining to developing novel low carbon pathways
- Assess resources requirements and corresponding implications of successful development and scale-up of novel technologies
The aim of this special issue is to use techno-economic evaluation, life cycle assessment, multi-criteria decision analysis, mathematical optimization and other related tools to cover emerging topics in the production of biofuels, bioproducts and other value-added products and chemicals.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
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- Biomass, residues, and waste as resources
- Bioenergy and bioproduct systems
- Biorefinery and biorefining strategies for value-added products and chemicals from bioresources
- Bio-based carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)
- Nature-based solutions for decarbonization
- Circular economy
- Process scale up and assessment of technology readiness levels (TRL)
- Economic, environmental, and social impacts of bio-based systems
***Should be an industry or public sector professional, or academic with an interest in one or more of fields listed on the site.
For more information, please contact the Guest Editors:
Sudhanya Banerjee
Aspen Technology, USA
Email: sudhanyab88@gmail.com
Deadline to submit manuscripts for consideration:
June 30, 2023
Please submit your article at https://www.editorialmanager.com/saej-steep and include a submission note in Editorial Manager to indicate that it is for this special issue.