NETEP: European-Brazilian Network on Energy Planning

Contract: EU Marie Curie IRSES Duration: 2014-2017 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, Zora Kovacic, François Diaz-Maurin, Alevgul H. Sorman, Rosaria Chifari

The general aim of the propose NETEP—European-Brazilian Network on Energy Planning is to create the basis for interdisciplinary research and knowledge transfer on energy planning. The proposed exchange programme envisages a significant contribution to the development of sustainable energy planning strategies that will support future decision making. NETEP brings together partners having different types of expertise in the field of energy analysis and operating in four different countries: Portugal, UK, Spain and Brazil expressing different energetic metabolic patterns and different energy market structures. Staff exchange will enable partners to share knowledge on models and methodologies and on the possibility of implementing or adapting them to different energy systems. The knowledge generated will benefit energy decision makers and the scientific community. The outputs will result in a relevant contribution to the general target of achieving sustainable energy societies in the future. Visits between universities’ research staff are expected to create the basis for proposing joint projects and long term collaboration. The participation and training of early career researchers is a key aspect of the proposal and joint supervision of their work will be valuable means to ensure proper collaboration and knowledge transfer between EU and Brazil.

PARTICIPIA:Participatory Integrated Assessment of Energy Systems to Promote Energy Access and Efficiency

Contract: EU EDULINK II Duration: 2013-2016 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, François Diaz-Maurin, Alevgul H. Sorman, Zora Kovacic, Sandra Bukkens

PARTICIPIA is a three-year project funded under the EDULINK II programme; an ACP-EU Co-operation Programme in Higher Education funded by the European Development Fund (EDF) and the Development Co-operation Instrument – Relations with South Africa (DCI).This project, co-ordinated by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), aims at developing and implementing innovative and competitive Master modules and/or programs in Participatory Integrated Assessment of Renewable Energy Systems in the ACP-member states of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. In this way, and through the dissemination of related know-how through non-academic channels, the action seeks to foster access to alternative energy technologies and their efficient utilization in different socio-economic and geographical contexts in Southern Africa.

EURO-AGRIWAT: Assessment of EUROpean AGRIculture WATer use and trade under climate change

Contract: COST ACTION ES 1106 Duration: 2013-2017 Resource People: Cristina Madrid-Lopez

The COST Action EURO-AGRIWAT focuses on the assessment of water footprint (WF) and virtual water trade (VWT) of key food and no-food agricultural products, including their uncertainties, as well as scenarios concerning WF and VWT under future climatic conditions. The use of advanced tools and data such as remote sensing, updated climatic databases, climatic projections/scenarios and agrometeorological models represents the base of the activity. The use of such instruments will allow a detailed analysis of interactions between crops, climate and management that will be taken into account in the WF assessment. An important component of the Action will be the preparation and dissemination of recommendations and guidelines for enabling a more efficient water resource management in relation with agricultural activities under climate change and variability. The framework of a COST Action represents the most suitable way for facing the outstanding and multi-faceted problem of sustainable water use, being characterized by a non-competitive and interdisciplinary environment of high scientific level. These features will allow a collaboration between scientists and stakeholders and the development of common strategies to broaden the available research expertise.

GLAMUR: Global and Local food chain Assessment: a MUltidimensional performance-based approach

Contract: EU 7th FP Duration: 2013-2016 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, Tiziano Gomiero, Pedro Lomas, Gonzalo Gamboa

The three-year project commences on 1st February 2013 and the overall objective is to integrate advancement in scientific knowledge about the impact of food chains with the application of knowledge about practice, in order to increase the sustainability of food chains through the development of both public policies and private strategies. This will be achieved by a range of research measures, that include: developing and validating a ‘performance criteria matrix’ for assessing and comparing food chains across a range of geographical scales; building a database of quantifiable indicators on the impact of specific food chains; developing methodologies that can better overcome the problems of comparing the impact of different food chains both within and between sectors; assessing how the notion of ‘performance’ within food chains is perceived by stakeholders in different national contexts; assessing both the actual and potential role of public and private policies in relation to food chains, and to make policy recommendations; and to build a network that can turn the advancements made in terms of scientific knowledge, into decision making tools for a range of organizations.

MARSS – Material Advanced Recovery Sustainable Systems

Contract: EU Life+ Duration: 2012-2015 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, Giuseppe Munda, Louis Lemkov, Gonzalo Gamboa, Rosaria Chifari

The EU Landfill Directive has underlined the importance of reducing the amount of untreated municipal solid waste (MSW) going to landfill as being one of the main sources of harmful greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane. Our research and results from extensive field tests and the previous pilot plant -known as the mechanical biological treatment (MBT) PRP test plant- indicate that our proposed Material Advanced Recovery Sustainable Systems (MARSS) demonstration project could provide countries with a real alternative to incineration based on a material recovery process that is do-able, robust, cheap and can be implemented quickly. In addition to the material recovery of metals, both ferrous and non-ferrous, this new process is designed on the inclusion of further processing steps of pre-sorting and refining in order to produce a high quality CO2-neutral, biomass fuel for energy recovery. This process maximizes the re-use of MSW and recovery of valuable metals, diverts organic material from landfill to comply with the EU Landfill Directive and avoids combustion of plastic fractions. The socio-economic impact will be monitored throughout the project, from the initial planning phase through to the construction of the pilot plant in Trier. Additionally, an analysis of social perceptions and conflicts will be carried out for the in-depth Naples case study.

SMILE: Synergies in Multi-scale Inter-Linkages of Eco-social systems

Contract: EU 7th FP Duration: 2008-2012 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, Alevgul H. Sorman

This project has the goal to apply and further develop the analytical tools studies in the DECOIN project to analyze trade-offs and synergies between different aspects of sustainable development. A number of cases study will be carried out to assess the validity of the tool-kit in different socio-economic, environmental and cultural contexts. The activity of the project will include the construction of different scenarios of future development paths characterized across scales and in relation to sustainability trade-offs.

DECOIN: Development and comparison of sustainability indicators

Contract: EU 6th FP Duration: 2006-2008 Resource People: Mario Giampietro, Alevgul H. Sorman

The DECOIN project deals with sustainable development indicators and the methodology of analyzing inter-linkages between different trends in the EU. The DECOIN project will contribute to the research towards a sustainable European knowledge society through the development of the EU framework of Sustainable Development Indicators. Through the methodological work concerning the analytical frameworks the project will help the EU and its Member States to better observe the trends in relation to the different dimensions of sustainability. The very broad societal relevance of the overall research topic is exceptional and so the project will play an important role in serving the society as a whole.