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Concerns surrounding climate change and environmental challenge make the coal utilization network essential not only for understanding the pattern of energy provision and transfer, but also for illustrating the interaction between anthropogenic activities and ecological systems at global level. This paper fills the research gap by dint of multi-regional input output model to outline coal embodied routes from natural boundaries to economic activities, and to identify the central hubs in the global coal supply chain, based on the most recent available statistics for 2011. As the economic value and environmental influences of different kinds of coals could be remarkably diverse, the separation of coal categories in systematic analysis could provide fundamental information regarding the displacement and teleconnection of coal utilization in the world. The estimation shows that in weight 64.99% of coal direct supply is ultimately embodied in international trade, indicating the crucial roles of trade interlinks in global coal utilization. Apart from this, the findings pertinent to sectoral structure, regional supply chain and per capita characteristics of coal embodied utilization, could be valuable to identify the global energy routes driven by international trade as well as to facilitate energy and environmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Seawater desalination is one of the most essential strategies to solve freshwater shortage issues worldwide. Though having the possibility of providing abundant freshwater resources, desalination projects are also limited by the pressure of freshwater consumption. Based on the systems process analysis, the freshwater cost of seawater desalination is assessed with the case study of a 25,000 tons/day seawater desalination plant in Huanghua Port, Hebei Province, China. The total embodied water consumption is 9.02E+06 m3, which is estimated in magnitude as five percent of the total freshwater production in the design cycle. Among all the sub-projects, the embodied water consumption in the technology system engineering represents the largest component, accounting for 60.12% of the total. The productivity level of the project is calculated to be 19.29, which highlights the potential of the desalination project for alleviating the shortage of freshwater. It is necessary to notice that the water yield of the project is calculated to be 9.12E+06 m3, which could achieve the freshwater balance of the construction phase in the first year of operation. The comprehensive inventory and procedure of the embodied water accounting in this work are expected to provide useful references for rational allocation of water resources and optimal design for other desalination projects. Graphical abstract Image 1 The pyramid model of freshwater cost levels. Highlights • The freshwater costs of the Huanghua Seawater Desalination are 9.02E+06 m3. • The productivity of the project is 19.29 m3 net water/m3 required water. • Materials with different levels of freshwater costs are compared and assessed. • The net freshwater volume per year of the project reaches 8.70E+06 m3. • The water demands of 8 enterprises in Cangzhou are meet by the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual water consumption accounting for an entire building construction engineering project including nine sub-projects is presented in this study to reveal the full picture of water consumption in building construction engineering. With the most comprehensive first-hand project data, this study is the first attempt to quantify a whole engineering project's virtual water consumption to the best of our knowledge. As numerous works have been undertaken for on-site water conservation in buildings, further efforts should be devoted to assessing water embodied in the construction process and intermediate material inputs. This research selects the construction engineering of a cluster of landmark commercial buildings in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area as a case study and derives more than 1000 items of first-hand project data from the Bill of Quantities. Based on the standard building construction classification, the total virtual water consumption of the nine sub-projects is quantified as 1.92E+06 m 3 , almost 24 times as much as the on-site water consumption. As the dominant sub-project, Structure and outside decoration engineering contributes more than half of the total water consumption. Fully considering the direct and indirect water embodied in the construction engineering, building materials, in particular steel, cement, lime, and metal products, contribute to more than 3/4 the total water consumption. As the virtual water consumption of China's annual increased building areas reaches 1/4 the direct national water consumption, both direct and indirect water consumed in the process of building construction should gain full attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]