Engineering and Sustainable Development Exam 1
The 8 UN Millennium Development Goals
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 2. Develop a global partnership for development 3. Reduce childhood mortality 4. Ensure environmental sustainability 5. Achieve universal primary education 6. Promote gender equality and empower women 7. Improve maternal health 8. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Population growth equation
A = Ai e^(k(t-ti))
FAR Model
Added ocean absorption of carbon dioxide to the 1980s model
SAR Model
Added the effects of aerosols and their ability to act as a negative radiative forcing to the FAR model
Indicates destruction of value due to impacts on individuals, communities, business enterprises, or the natural environment
Adverse Outcome Indicator (AOI)
Precipitate, corrosion, or effects on human health due to air made physically impure, unclean, befouled, dirty, or tainted
Air pollution
______ ______ is compatible with local, cultural, and economic conditions (ie, the human, material, and cultural resources of the economy) and utilizes locally, available materials and energy resources with tools and processes maintained and operationally controlled by the local population
Appropriate technology
Framework that values all living things in Earth's community, so each organism is a center of life pursuing its own good in its own way, and all organisms are interconnected
Biocentric outlook by Paul Taylor
Design strategy that systematically analyzes natural processes for engineering solutions
Biomimicry
The relationship between consumption of a natural resource, waste production, and regeneration of that resource
Carrying capacity.
An act is either ethical or unethical if, when it is universalized, it makes for a better world
Categorical imperative by Immanuel Kant
Defined Criteria Air Pollutants: Ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, lead
Clean Air Act (1963)
The average course or condition of the weather at a particular place over a period of many years exhibited in absolute extremes, means and frequencies of given departures from these means, of temperatures, wind velocity, precipitation, and other weather elements
Climate
Long term changes to global and regional climate brought about by changes to climatic drivers, such as global temperature
Climate change
TAR Model
Combined FAR and SAR and included major sources and sinks of carbon and began evaluating other radiative forcing factors
Also known as cogeneration , the exploitation of usable waste heat
Combined heat and power systems (CHP)
When government requires industries to obtain permits, pay fees, and/or install best available technologies to achieve desired limits or controls on pollution
Command and control regulation
Examples of SCI
Community educational equity, infrastructure durability, housing density, local household employment
Examples of VCI
Cost, fuel efficiency, energy efficiency, vehicle use
The right of all the forms to live is a universal right which cannot be quantified. No single species of living being has more of this particular right to live than any other species.
Deep ecology by Arne Naess
The redesign of products to minimize their materials content
Dematerialization
Examples of DfE practices
Dematerialization Design for recyclability Design for disassembly Remanufacturing Minimized use of energy, toxic materials, and toxic production processes
Human energy consumption represents ____ ____, as our demand for an energy fuel or an energy-producing technology results from a primary personal or economic need for a service that energy provides
Derived demand
The idea that environmental protection should be designed into products rather than managed as an after-the-fact harm
Design for environment (DfE)
When a recycled material or product is used in an application that is of lower quality or has more limited functionality
Downcycling
Relationship between consumption and supply of natural resources
Ecological footprint
Represents the idea that a wide variety of ecological dynamics support humankind in a way that a simple consideration of natural resource use does not
Ecosystem services
____ are communities of living organisms, where the dynamics represent flow of nutrients and energy between living entities and their abiotic physical environment (water, air, soil, minerals, and climate)
Ecosystems
Efforts to reduce the demand for energy by changing people's need for energy services
Energy curtailment
The productivity of technologies that convert an energy input into a more useful or usable form
Energy efficiency
The dynamics of a nation's economic system as it industrializes and intensifies its use of energy overall, measured as energy consumed per monetary unit of GDP
Energy intensity
The model developed by the International Energy Agency that describes how both the quality and quantity of energy used in a household changes as incomes rise
Energy ladder
Under conditions of _____ _____, families are unable to access or afford commercially provided energy such as electricity or liquid petroleum gas. Instead, households are low on the energy ladder and may rely on biomass that they gather themselves or on limited purchases of kerosene, charcoal, and batteries
Energy poverty
_____ ______ can exploit waste heat from industrial processes as well as the energy embodied in solid waste (such as garbage)
Energy recovery
The concept that refers to the ability of a nation to protect itself from the economic, political, and social disruptions of an interrupted supply of a critical energy resource, of the failure of important energy infrastructure, or of rapid and steep changes in energy prices
Energy security
Recognizing that we are, at least at the present time, unable to explain rationally our attitude towards the environment and these attitudes are deeply felt
Environmental ethic by Vesilind and Gunn
The framework for making difficult decisions when we face a problem involving moral conflict
Ethics
Resources that take millions of years to form and can only be regenerated on a geological timescale, if at all
Finite resources
Residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation
Four end-use sectors
Fossil fuel combustion equation
Fuel + oxygen --> energy + carbon dioxide + water
According to most professional ethics codes, engineers must hold paramount in their designs the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
Fundamental Canon of National Society of Professional Engineers Code of Ethics
An increase in equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere and oceans caused by the addition of gases or aerosols that inhibit the outward flow of infrared radiation
Global warming
Examples of RFI
Greenhouse gas emissions, material flow analysis, recycling rate
Examples of AOI
Health impacts of air pollution, public safety, sewer overflow frequency
3 major energy services
Heat, transport, electricity
.7-.79 HDI
High Human Development
A concept that lets us analyze the different rates of growth in demand for a fossil fuel and the rate at which new reserves become available. Most intensively discussed as peak oil, which represents not the stock of oil, but the flow rate of oil into the economy
Hubbert Curve
Measurement or metric based on verifiable data that can be used to communicate important information about processes related to sustainable design or development
Indicator
A systems approach to industrial processes that models material and energy flows
Industrial Ecology
Elemental metals are considered to be _____ _____ because they can be continuously recovered and reused
Infinitely recyclable
Framework that encourages people to extend the thinking about communities to which we should behave ethically to include soil, water, plants and animals, or collectively, the land
Land ethic by Aldo Leopold
Models that analyze a product from its source raw materials through its fabrication to its ultimate end of life disposal
Life cycle models
< .51 HDI
Low Human Development
A value that is quantifiable against a standard at a point in time
Measure
.51-.7 HDI
Medium Human Development
A standardized set of measurements or data related to one or more sustainability indicators
Metric
Climate models in the 1980s
Modeled carbon dioxide and changes in Earth's albedo
Climate models in 1970s
Modeled carbon dioxide to understand acid rain
The values people adopt to guide the way they ought to treat each other
Morals
AR4 Model
Most recent climate model, uses satellite data to include regional changes
The concept of ____ _____ can be illustrated by viewing natural resources and ecosystem services as "money in the bank" of Earth and acknowledging that humankind lives off of this money. Ideally, we would protect this investment and its ability to generate interest
Natural capital
When a naturally occurring substance or living organism is exploited by human beings
Natural resource
Physical presence of a substance in a form that we would recognize
Occurrence
Largest carbon reservoir
Ocean
Comes from fossil fuel combustion, construction, volcanoes, and can cause respiratory health problems, asthma in particular
Particulate Matter (PM)
Triple bottom line
People, planet, profit
______ areas are rapidly growing fringe zones with very high population densities which typically have inadequate infrastructure to distribute energy, water, and sanitation services.
Peri-urban
Naturally occurring resources that we extract from the environment and then process into things useful for people
Raw materials
Physically capturing a substance and reusing it in its original form
Recoverability
Separating usable material from waste, processing these materials into their constituent raw substances, and using these substances
Recycling
Common basic strategies followed by developed countries in pursuit of energy security
Reduce dependence on fossil fuels, particularly imported fuels Decentralize electric power production Control the growth in demand for energy
The recovering of modules or components for reassembly or reuse
Remanufacturing
Resources that replenish themselves through natural processes within a human lifetime
Renewable resource
A measure that reflects a high degree of certainty about the location and amount of occurrences that are recoverable and economically profitable
Reserve
Subset of occurrences that reflect deposits of sufficient quantity that they may be recovered, although we may not be able to do so profitably
Resource
Indicates pressures associated with the rate of consumption of resources, including materials, energy, water, land, or biota
Resource Flow Indicator (RFI)
Prevention of waste at the beginning of a product's life cycle
Source reduction
Most preferred option to least preferred option in waste hierarchy
Source reduction > recycling > energy recovery > treatment and disposal
The concept that the Brundtland Report put forward was that of _____ _____, which the report defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"
Sustainable development
Indicates the state of the system in question, that is, individuals, communities, business enterprises, or the natural environmental.
System Condition Indicator (SCI)
_________ introduced the concept of intergenerational equity in Our Common Future (1987) with its definition of sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"
The Brundtland Commission
Subcategories of CHP systems
Topping cycle plants Bottoming cycle plants
The idea that if there is a common resource, it is rational for individuals to increase their use of it, which degrades it. Each individual gets a large benefit for a small (individual) cost
Tragedy of the commons
Indicates the creation of value (both economic and well-being) through enhancement of individuals, communities, business enterprises, or the natural environment
Value Creation Indicator (VCI)
>.79 HDI
Very High Human Development
The collection, transport, processing, disposal, and monitoring of waste materials
Waste management
The state of the atmosphere at a definite time and place with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, etc
Weather
When societies industrialize, their energy intensity ______ as the industrialization process increases household income through the dynamics of economic development
increases
The UN Human Development Index (HDI) is based on three dimensions: ______ ______, ______, and ______
life expectancy, education, and income
Valuation of ecosystem services can become complicated, and often must rely on methods of ______ ______, assigning monetary value that is not based on the price of actually buying and selling the good or service in question
non-market valuation