Emergy Accounting, Planetary Survival, Prosperous Way Down and Environmental Policy Making
A special issue of Environments (ISSN 2076-3298).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 89
Special Issue Editors
2. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing 100875, China
Interests: life cycle assessment; energy–exergy–emergy; environmental impact assessment; circular economy; urban metabolism and sustainability; food and water security; disparity in access to energy sources; large efforts invested in energy and resource efficiency, prosperous way down, and environmental integrity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: systems thinking and emergy analysis; ecological modeling; natural sciences; systems theory; environmental science; experimental study of nanostructured glasses; glasses for ict and for energy technologies; artistic glasses
Interests: energy economics; system ecology; urban ecological planning; waste management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In the month of January 2025, the 12th Emergy Conference (emergy spelled with an m) will take place in Gainesville, FL USA, specifically dedicated to applications and development of the emergy accounting approach introduced by the ecologist Howard T. Odum in the 1970s. “Emergy” is a measure of the support provided by the biosphere to all systems, ecosystems, and processes on Earth, thanks to the availability of resources in the form of materials and energy. Such a measure is performed by means of the same unit (solar emergy joule), in order to allow a better comparison of supporting input flows as well as to calculate performance and sustainability indicators.
Considering the deep link between the emergy method and environmental issues, we suggest to dedicate a Special Issue of Environments to topics that will be an important part of the conference (https://www.emergysociety.com/emergy-synthesis-12/) and still are of huge interest in worldwide research aiming at planetary survival and sustainability: biodiversity, ecosystem services, sustainability and resilience, agriculture, wetland, forestry, freshwater and marine ecosystem protection, culture and information, urban systems, environmental policy making, and prosperous way down, among others. Application of the emergy approach to these important issues may provide opportunities to further develop our deeper understanding of biosphere dynamics, suggest methodological improvements and integration with other evaluation approaches, make the emergy method an important component of environmentally sound policy making.
Review and research papers are welcome; either they can be presented at the conference or simply submitted by scholars who are unable to attend it.
Information about the emergy method is easily accessible on the website of ISAER (International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research,
All papers presented to the past emergy conferences can be found on the ISAER website, under the item “Resources” and in the topic “Proceedings”.
Prof. Dr. Sergio Ulgiati
Prof. Dr. Francesco Gonella
Dr. Gengyuan Liu
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- environmental assessment
- emergy
- universal energy hierarchy
- hierarchical distribution of materials
- transforming
- unit emergy value
- systems thinking
- maximum power principle
- prosperous way down
- pulsing paradigm
- labor & services
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