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Eco-design practices are still incipient in Brazilian furniture industries, although some improvement can be identified in recent years. This paper describes the performance of an industrial furniture cluster located in Southern Brazil regarding such practices. An embedded case study involving four companies — two manufacturers and two suppliers — was carried out using in-depth interviews. It enabled to depict particularities of how these companies deal with sustainable aspects of design in their respective business. Critical issues identified as obstacles for eco-design implementation in these industries were: control of both, productive process and product durability; product distribution; rational use of space for transportation and storage. Minor difficulties were identified regarding the lack of renewable energy sources and the scarcity of knowledge dissemination. Such hurdles could provide opportunities and support future eco-design strategy implementation, improving the competitiveness and contributing for the eco-efficiency of the Brazilian furniture industry.

As the world’s population continues to expand, scientists are working to address the energy needs and challenges that accompany growth with environmentally responsible approaches. Nanoscience is helping to provide solutions to energy and environmental concerns in a number of ways.

The current topic of clean air and water is often left incomplete. When we discuss cleaner cars or more regulations, we forget that none of this can genuinely be sustainable without improving our infrastructure, an objective we are mostly avoidant. With this sprouting age of technology, we have companies interject that their model is “the newest in sustainability.” Still, the systems that support production have fallen rapidly behind due to a lack of funding and push from the public. In this paper, I hope to begin a discussion on the importance of improving our energy infrastructure over the course of my lifetime. Eventually, a sprout of real change might happen to improve the lives of those around me.

Senegal is located in West Africa with a population close to 16 million inhabitants unequally distributed on a land of 196,722 km² area. In the 2000s, a national energy information system (known as SIE-Sénégal) aiming at monitoring and forecasting the energy demand and the efficient planning of the energy infrastructure was put in place in the Ministry of Oil and Energies. A lot of data were recorded of which some are analyzed and presented here for a better understanding of the energy system of Senegal. In the period 2000–2013, the energy demand has been increasing reaching 3.72 Mtoe in 2013. The demand is covered by imported fossil fuels and traditional biomass. The energy consumption has been increasing in the same period from 1.69 Mtoe in 2000 up to 2.56 Mtoe in 2013. The energy pattern shows a lion’s share for the residential sector followed by the transport and industrial sectors. In the residential sector, firewood is the main fuel, and electricity is deemed marginal. The transport sector is dominated by the road subsector where diesel oil represents 81% of the energy use. In the industrial sector, more than 80% of energy used is from fossil origin and the share of coal is becoming significant.

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) acknowledge the interlinkages between human well-being, economic prosperity, and a healthy environment, and hence, are associated with a wide range of topical issues that include the securities of water, energy, and food (WEF) resources, poverty eradication, economic development, climate change, health, among others. As SDGs are assessed through targets to be achieved by 2030 and monitored through measurable indicators, nexus planning was applied as a transformative approach to monitor and assess progress toward SDG in 2015 and 2018 using South Africa. WEF nexus-related SDGs that were evaluated include Goals 2 (zero hunger), 6 (clean water and sanitation), and 7 (affordable and clean energy). The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to integrate indicators for each of the reference years. Resource management and implementation of WEF-related SDGs improved by 31% (from 0.155 to 0.203) between 2015 and 2018 in South Africa but remained marginally sustainable. The assessment provided an evidence-based support framework for improved and effective management strategies to meet set SDG targets. The connections between the WEF nexus and SDGs strengthen cross-sectoral collaboration among stakeholders, unpack measures for cooperative governance and management, and supporting outcomes that arise from different cross-sectoral interventions. As food production, water provision, and energy accessibility are the major socio-economic and environmental issues currently attracting global attention, the method enhances climate change adaptation.

Arguably, to nourish or take care of the needs of all of humankind — sustainable and affordable access to clean water, safe sanitation, and clean air, together with a sufficiency of energy, food, and shelter — should be universally available. Yet, many humans do not enjoy such access or availability, even though it has been 70 years since the 1948 United Nations (UN) declaration on human rights proclaimed “that all human beings are equal, and have inherent rights.” However, only food and shelter were explicitly mentioned in the initial declaration. Others were recently added to the UN list, but not air and energy. Nevertheless, basic human needs do not have to be declared as a human right before national actions are taken. Today’s key driver is the UN 2030 Agenda, a plan to eradicate all global poverty and set the world onto a “sustainable and resilient path,” through the achievement of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adopted by all UN members, the 2030 Agenda in essence, is a 21^st century version of the 1948 proclamation. The SDGs explicitly detail, or implicitly in the case of clean air, all the necessary needs for the nourishing of tomorrow. To achieve the plan will likely require, at least, changes in national cultural values, eliminating inequalities and disparities, developing more appropriate governance strategies, and meaningful technical innovation. In this chapter, these requirements are discussed against a backdrop of presently known deficiencies in global nourishment needs.

Supercapacitors and fuel cells are essential energy devices for the implementation of a real renewable energy economy. The development of highly efficient and low-cost electrode materials is one of the major challenges to improve these devices. Biomass-derived carbon materials are postulated as a very interesting alternative, as they can be obtained from inexpensive precursors and abundant resources obtained directly from nature. However, they commonly exhibit an underdeveloped porous structure and a lack of controlled surface functionalities that limit their real application. Therefore, it is essential to apply different approaches to modify and design their properties to fit the requirements of energy storage and conversion devices. This chapter attempts to provide a broad overview of the most promising strategies that can be followed to design biomass-derived carbon materials with highly efficient performance in energy applications, such as supercapacitors and fuel cells.

This paper investigates the feasibility of recycling waste heat from a diesel engine, and also the effects of using ethanol-diesel oil as an alternative fuel. Through thermodynamic analyses, the study reveals that a significant amount of energy is contained in both the exhaust gas and cooling water, and that recycling this energy will reduce emissions, conserve energy, and improve the thermal and exergy efficiency of the diesel engine. The use of ethanol-diesel oil will lead to significantly reduced exhaust emissions without significant impact on the engine's performance parameters.

Energy-based assets are showing increased susceptibility to volatility arising out of geo-political, economic, climate and technological events. Given the economic importance of energy products, their market participants need to be able to access efficient strategies to effectively manage their exposures and reduce price risk. This chapter will outline the key futures-based hedging approaches that have been developed for managing energy price risk and evaluate their effectiveness. A key element of this analysis will be the breadth of assets considered. These include Crude and Refined Oil products, Natural Gas and wholesale Electricity markets. We find significant differences in the hedging effectiveness of the different energy markets. A key finding is that, Natural Gas and particularly Electricity futures are relatively ineffective as a risk management tool when compared with other energy assets.

As a kind of development theory, sustainable development is becoming the world's common development philosophy and principles; energy is an important part of sustainable development. At present, China's energy legislation has been enacted many laws and regulations, but has not yet constitute a sound legal system, supervision mechanism is not reasonable, legal lack of maneuverability. We must be guided by the sustainable development, improve the energy law system, rationalize the management mechanism, enhance the maneuverability of the energy law, energy to accelerate and perfect the legislation, promote the harmony of man and nature.