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In a recent paper, Sadhukhan et al. (2021) describe “the mathematics of life cycle sustainability assessment”. This is an ambitious task for a 12-page paper, given that a previous text on the mathematics of life cycle assessment (Heijungs and Suh, 2002) took 250 pages, for a smaller subject, and that another paper (Heijungs et al., 2013) which was more modest in announcing an approach “toward” the mathematics of life cycle sustainability assessment was already 12 pages. Of course, a paper from 2021 can build on and refer to such previous works, and thereby be more concise. The curious fact is, however, that Sadhukhan et al. (2021) do not refer to and neither build on those previous publications. They even ignore other related works that were published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, including Gwak et al. (2003), Suh and Huppes (2005), Heijungs and Suh (2006) and Islam et al. (2016).

In the transition to a more sustainable world, the development of sustainable technologies needs to be accompanied by promoting the legitimacy of the technologies. Consumers that perceive a technology as desirable and appropriate are more likely to adopt it. Organizations can collaborate to enhance the legitimacy of new technologies. While previous research has emphasized the importance of collaboration in the field of sustainability, it has not studied collaborative efforts of organizations aimed at achieving legitimacy of sustainable technologies. The contribution of this paper is therefore to analyze the role of inter-organizational alliances in creating legitimacy for a sustainable technology. The paper contributes to the literature by analyzing how alliances create three types of legitimacy: technology-sourced market legitimacy, technology-sourced social legitimacy and technology legitimacy. It focuses on the case of bio-plastics, which is emerging as a sustainable technology in the chemical industry. The analysis is based on a database containing information on 105 alliances in the field of bio-plastics over the period 1990-2013. The results show that alliances aim to promote technology-sourced market and social legitimacy by providing access to the sustainable technology of a partner, by collaboratively developing a sustainable technology, or by providing the technology of a partner with access to customers and production capacity. Alliances promote technology legitimacy by relying on positive externalities, by exercising their signaling role, and by acting as institutional entrepreneurs. The paper concludes that there are differences between alliances that create technology-sourced market and social legitimacy on the one hand, and technology legitimacy on the other hand. The first type of alliances are often bilateral alliances between for-profit companies that produce and market sustainable technologies. In contrast, alliances that stimulate technology legitimacy are multilateral alliances that operate in the pre-competitive stage of the value chain and involve not-for-profit organizations.

The potential environmental benefits of moving from a product-based economy to a functional economy involving greater use of services is a subject of increasing interest and debate in the field of eco-efficiency. This paper provides a typology and fuller analysis of eco-efficient producer services than hitherto reported. Three broad classes of service are described and assessed: product based including product results, product utility and product extension; electronic substitution and information based. Examples of each are drawn from a major study on the successes and barriers of eco-services in Europe. The paper concludes that while there are a number of areas of success, there are considerable barriers to wider development and uptake of such services, and that many of the more successful service applications are not necessarily driven by environmental considerations. The paper warns that the shift from products to services cannot be assumed to be eco-efficient and there are a number of rebound effects which need to be carefully analysed. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Policies to assure combatting climate change and realising energy security have stimulated a rapid growth in global installed capacity of renewable energy generation. The expansion of power generation from renewables, though, has so far lagged behind the growth in generation capacity. This indicates missed and relatively cheap opportunities to reduce GHG emissions. This paper sheds light on the mismatch between installed capacity and power generation for the case of wind power. It analyses and compares wind power developments in the four countries that contributed most to the increase in wind power capacity during the last decade: namely, China, the United States, Germany and Spain. We estimate the dynamics of capacity utilisation of wind power installations and identify its drivers. Finally, we identify potential policies to reduce the gap between power capacity and generation, which will contribute to cost-effective reduction of GHG emissions.

For the sustainable development of technological innovations the involvement of non-specialist stakeholders is crucial, which requires transparency of the knowledge base of the risks and benefits concerned. This paper evaluates the basic assumptions of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development regarding the environmental risks of genetically modified micro-organisms, in industrial biotechnology under Good Industrial Large-scale Practice. A clear factual basis for these assumptions could be only partially traced, if at all, and when facts were found they proved to provide only limited support, if any. In addition, several assumptions appeared to be questionable when contrasted with knowledge from chemical and ecological sciences. There remain a number of open questions with respect to risks, most of them relating to improvement and extension of procedures, through greater attention to baselines, safety limits and further standardisation. The necessity of transparency in stakeholder communication is discussed and possible ways of improving such communication are presented.