Fear of lowering firms’ competitiveness and carbon leakage is the reason for large amounts of allowances in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) still being allocated for free. At the same time, unadjusted free allocation of allowan...
Various municipal solid waste management (MSWM) innovations have emerged in developing countries in face of the challenges posed by increasing waste generation and poor MSWM practice. We present a methodology to assess the potential sustainability im...
Every decision-oriented life cycle assessment (LCAs) entails, at least to some extent, a future-oriented feature. However, apart from the ex-ante LCAs, the majority of LCA studies are retrospective in nature and do not explicitly account for possible...
CO2 emissions reduction has long been discussed, since the problem is one of the most urgent issues we human beings are faced with in the 21st century. Time-sharing electric vehicles (TSEVs), combining the benefits of cleaner energy and more sufficie...
The sustainability of urban surfaces can be enhanced by introducing innovations. An ex-ante assessment of the potential sustainability impacts of innovations in urban areas can provide decision-makers with valuable recommendations for their selection...
Public spending on research and innovation (R&I) to tackle grand societal challenges, such as climate change, is increasing. Consequently, research funding organisations face an ever-growing demand to demonstrate the social return of their invest...
While the concept of insect based feeds (IBFs) promises great potential, especially in developing countries, the sustainability performance of IBF production remains widely underexplored. Drawing on experimental data from rearing trials in West Afric...
One approach to reducing the environmental costs of economic activity is to design and implement policies that aim at decoupling economic activity from its environmental impacts. Such a decoupling requires an economy-wide approach to policy-making, t...
Directive 2014/95, in force since 2017, is the first European step that requires undertakings to provide mandatory non-financial information. The regulation concerns sustainability information, such as environmental, social, and employee information,...
Rising demand for bio-based products exerts growing pressure on natural resources such as wood. The agricultural technique of short rotation coppice (SRC) to produce dendromass from fast growing trees has gained relevance to ease the pressure of dema...
This systematic review examines methodological choices in assessing hydrogen production and utilisation technologies using prospective life cycle assessments (LCA) between 2010 and 2022, following PRISMA guidelines. The review analysed 32 peer-review...
Potable water production from seawater generates brines that can produce stress in ecosystems, but they are also a potential source of metal and minerals. In our multi-mineral modular seawater brine mining process under development, calcium removal w...
In recent years, there has been a trend of increasing criticism towards official development assistance (ODA) and the optimization of ODA policies, in a world of growing inequality between the Global North and Global South. To contribute to efficient...
Ex-ante appraisal of agricultural policy needs a transparent way to trace how sectoral interventions translate into production. We study the Polish CAP case and ask how much selected actions matter for livestock sectors. We assembled intervention-lev...
The explosive growth of the global market for Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) and the lack of a closing loop strategy of composite waste have raised environmental concerns. Circular economy studies, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and L...
In this article, we aim to promote a methodology to analyze the effects of urban regeneration in historical sites. Different case studies are observed in depth, and they allow us to understand certain aspects concerning ex-post and ex-ante assessment...
The great recession brought an increased need for public revenues and generated distributive concerns across many countries. This has led to a new generation of green tax reforms characterized by the use of markedly heterogeneous proposals that, over...
It is generally accepted that flood risk has been increasing in Europe in the last decades. Accordingly, it becomes a priority to better understand its drivers and mechanisms. Flood risk is evaluated on the basis of three factors: hazard, exposure an...
This paper reviews the ex-post assessment of city logistics measures implemented in some European cities and, in a “what if” framework, proposes an analysis of tested environmental effects which may be useful in defining city logistics scenarios to b...
The development of adaptation indicators and metrics that can be aggregated and compared to support environmental management is a key challenge for climate experts, finance institutions, and decision-makers. To provide an operational ex-ante evaluati...
The turn of the 21st century heralded in the semiconductor age alongside the Anthropocene epoch, characterised by the ever-increasing human impact on the environment. The ecological consequences of semiconductor chip manufacturing are the most predom...
Maize production in Uganda is constrained by various factors, but especially drought and stem borers contribute to significant yield losses. Genetically modified (GM) maize with increased drought tolerance and/or Bt insect resistance (producing the B...
In the European Union, greenhouse gas emissions statistics indicate only a slight decreasing trend over the last number of years in emissions from agricultural sources. Unless drastic action is taken in other sectors, the European Union’s 2030...
Rural Development Plan (RDP) measures support farmers in improving the sustainability of their agricultural holdings. The implementation of these policies has economic, social, and environmental impacts, which are monitored either ex-ante, ongoing, o...
The direction adopted for the energy transitions towards a low carbon future will have long lasting implications in other aspects beyond the Climate Change. However, cities are becoming increasingly complex and a detailed knowledge is required for a...
The holistic modelling approach required for the long-term integrated urban energy planning is becoming a big challenge since the complexity of cities, as well as their commitments are increasing rapidly. Many municipalities require technical support...
The transaction cost (TC) escalation is the pervasive problem in the construction industry, which is continuously a threat to maintaining the life cycle cost of projects. Researchers have described the reality of risk for economic transactions. This...
In recent decades, mechanisms for observation and information production have proliferated in an attempt to meet the growing needs of stakeholders to access dynamic data for the purposes of informed decision-making. In the land sector, a growing numb...
Crop diversification represents a key lever to support the development of sustainable agri-food systems. Knowledge on trade-offs and carry over effects from different crop diversification strategies is essential to inform agricultural stakeholders of...
The article concentrates on the relationship between reduced value added tax (VAT) rate on books and readership level as a projected goal in cultural policy. To figure out this complex link, the paper explores the contribution of public management an...
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being considered as an option to reduce societies’ vulnerability to natural hazards, creating co-benefits while protecting ecosystem services in a context of changing climate patterns with more freq...
Various hazards and endemic threats are increasingly looming over cities, leading planners to rely on a rich toolbox of flexible and inclusive planning instruments and methods, capable of dealing with unpredicted events or sudden urban contingencies,...
Agricultural injuries are a valuable social sustainability indicator. However, current methods use sector-scale production data, so are unable to assess the impact of changes in individual farming practices. Here, we developed a method that adopts a...
Generating policy-relevant scenarios is instrumental for understanding and developing policy measures. These are especially relevant to the power sector. Practitioners have been working on policy-relevant scenarios for the ex-ante assessment of polic...
Water pricing is an economic instrument traditionally used to reduce water demand. However, its effective implementation requires knowledge of the extent to which users reduce water consumption with increasing water prices. The price elasticity of wa...
Recognizing the negative consequences of auto-oriented urban transportation, Chinese cities began developing Urban Street Design Guidelines (USDGs) in 2016. The literature on urban transportation design from a decision-making perspective is very limi...
In this paper, we present the Integrated Policy Package Assessment (IPPA) approach and relate IPPA to three substantial concepts of problem-oriented research concerned with societal transformations: technology assessment (TA), sustainability research...
In large-scale projects, such as transport infrastructures, the cost-planning phase stands out as one of the most crucial for the project’s success. Cost and time overruns, during the construction phase, are often the cause of project failure....
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The appraisal of appropriate levels of investment for devising flooding mitigation and to support recovery interventions is a complex and challenging task. Evaluation must account for social, political, environmental and other conditions, such as flo...
Policy instruments for a circular economy and for environmental protection both aim at sustainable development, but do not necessarily share the same goals. The purpose of the paper is to assess the coherence with the EU-recognized circular economy p...
The results of an ex-ante survey aiming to assess the impact of a fish farm in the Mar Grande of Taranto (southern Italy, Mediterranean Sea) on the surrounding environment are reported. There, the implementation of an innovative IMTA plant was planne...
The paper deals with the integration of data provided from traditional transport surveys (small data) with big data, provided from Information and Communication Technology (ICT), in building Transport System Models (TSMs). Big data are used to observ...
The purpose of this study was to examine two biomass district heating plants operating in Tuscany, with a specific focus on the ex-post evaluation of their economic and financial feasibility and of their environmental benefits. The former biomass dis...
This study assesses greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reductions and sustainable development impacts connected to the nationally appropriate mitigation action (NAMA) on sustainable charcoal production in Mozambique. The analysis covers the results of the...
Wine producers face several challenges regarding climate change, which will affect this industry both in the present and the future. Vulnerability assessments are at the forefront of current climate research, therefore, the present paper has two main...
Urban sustainability has been used to cover multiple aspects of urban development. Terms related to sustainability have been generously used to advance ubiquitous and hard-to-measure targets not least in response to global and national sustainable de...
The renovation of public lighting installations by replacing the traditional systems with LED technologies and introducing smart lighting control systems is a policy widely adopted to contain energy consumption and expenditure. Additionally, the long...
Travel policies during crises strongly reshape mobility patterns, raising the challenge of protecting public health while minimizing socio-economic disruption—an essential concern for sustainable development. Most evaluations quantify changes i...
This paper develops and applies an ex-ante methodological framework to assess the societal optimisation of eBRT innovations within the Horizon Europe eBRT2030 project, using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and the PROMETHEE method. The study...
Landscape is increasingly characterized by a multifaced nature. In scientific literature and landscape governance, new landscape definitions are often coined to explain new meanings and to define specific intervention strategies and tools. The presen...
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