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