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The need for climate change mitigation calls for significant actions to match the sustainable development goals and, in this context, road construction and management play a relevant role (cf. EU Green Public Procurement Criteria for Road Design, Construction and Maintenance and Environmental Product Declarations - EPD). In such a context, the role of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is broadly recognized as a tool to quantify sustainability of processes and systems. This study aims at calculating the life-cycle energy and carbon footprint of a typical Italian urban road, including materials production, transportation, construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation. The LCA approach is applied according to the ISO 14040 regulations series. Authors assess the life cycle energy and carbon footprint of several alternative scenarios based on mixture type and reuse/recycle of waste materials as well as developing dominance analyses. The main contribution of this study is to provide a systemic approach for energy and carbon footprint assessment for the sake of all stakeholders, in order to support the development of new models of low-energy consumption and innovative production models.

The bio-wastes pyrolysis is a waste to energy strategy that converts bio-wastes into valuable products (bio-char, bio-oil) with wide use in the agri-food sector. However, limited efforts are paid to the investigation of its environmental sustainability: in this context, the study contributes the need towards the assessment of a wide range of environmental impacts for the pyrolysis process of different types of bio-wastes under different operating conditions. The study estimates the potential environmental impacts related to bio-char production from the pyrolysis of several different agro-industrial residues and different temperatures and identifies the process “hot spots”. The analysis is carried out through the life cycle assessment methodology. The functional unit for the analysis is 1 MJ of thermal energy potentially released during the complete combustion of bio-char obtained from the pyrolysis process. The study highlights that, under the examined conditions, the type of biomass affects the environmental impacts of the pyrolysis process more than the peak pyrolysis temperature. Among the biomasses tested, bio-char obtained from orange peels has the lower environmental impacts, with an average percentage difference of about 16% compared to bio-char obtained from olive tree trimmings that has the worst environmental performance. For each biomass, the impacts associated to bio-char obtained with different operational temperatures have percentage differences in general lower than 5%. A contribution analysis shows that the electricity consumed during the operational phase is responsible for the largest impacts in all the examined impact categories, followed by bio-wastes transportation. In detail, the contribution of the electricity to the total impact ranges from minimum values of about 44% (for cumulative energy demand) up to 91% (for terrestrial eutrophication), while transportation contributions range from a minimum of about 4% (for terrestrial and marine eutrophication) to 36% for mineral, fossil and renewable resource depletion. Therefore, the use of more energy efficient processes and technologies and the diffusion of distributed pyrolysis systems near farms can significantly improve the environmental performance of the system examined.

The paper describes the results of a specific LCA based analysis of the production of olive oil in the region of Calabria, in southern Italy. The goal of the study is to assess the energy and environmental impacts of different scenarios involving conventional and organic cultivations, plains and hills cultivations and involving different operating techniques. The study also aims at assessing the share of each life cycle step on the total of energy and environmental impacts. The functional unit chosen for the comparative analysis is a glass bottle of 0.75 L of extra virgin olive oil. A “from cradle to gate” perspective was chosen. The analysis was developed according to the LCA standards of the ISO 14040 series. The analysis is based on a field analysis developed in the last years in the province of Reggio Calabria between more than 50 enterprises and stakeholders of the field, representative of the whole Calabria region and of most southern Italy. The data used for the development of mass and energy balances are related to the years 2013–2015. The results clarify that for all indicators that the first part of the life cycle – from the production, including the growth of the olive plant to the full production stage – is the most relevant, variable between 80.6% share in the case of the particulate matter indicator to the 99.64% in the case of land use (Hill – Biological agriculture scenario). Relevant differences can be also traced for each specific indicator among all scenarios; high impacts are traced for the agricultural stages among all scenarios (70% −90% in all indicators) with high impacts caused by fertilizers. Among the transformation stages the bottle production is one of the most relevant sources of life cycle energy uses and environmental impacts (80–90%).

The increasing use of renewable energy technologies for electricity generation in buildings will require a growing number of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to enhance the reliability of electricity supply. The increasing number of retired electric vehicle (EV) batteries, expected from the automotive sector, can match this demand as EV batteries can be used as BESS, considering that they have about 80% of their original energy capacity. In this context, the study aims at examining the system, consisting of a BESS made by retired Li-ion EV batteries, a photovoltaic plant (20 kW) and the electricity grid, that provides the electricity required by an existing nearly net zero residential building (25.000 kWh/year). The goal is to identify the optimal BESS size, expressed as energy capacity, for load match optimization and environmental impacts in a life cycle perspective. A BESS of around 46 kWh of energy capacity allows achieving significant results in terms of load match increase and environmental sustainability. The study includes an environmental assessment combining the load match analysis and the life cycle approach. It highlights the potential synergy inspired to the principles of the circular economy and of the industrial symbiosis, between the building and the automotive sector.

Food production is recognised as one of the major drivers for global environmental pressure. In the last years, changes in consumption models result in an increasing population consuming food out of home that pose the catering service sector at the centre of the European Union policies aimed at improving the environmental sustainability of the food sector. In this framework, better technical knowledge on the environmental impacts of catering service is essential in order to identify potential actions towards a more sustainable food sector. This article presents an environmental assessment of a school catering service operating in Italy and delivering approximately 2,518,128 meals per year. Starting from primary data on the amount of each food consumed in the catering service examined, we perform an environmental analysis of an equivalent meal ready to be consumed in the schools canteens by using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology consistent with ISO 14040 standard. The system boundaries include food and tableware production, food transport, food storage and cooking and waste treatment. Due to a lack of primary data tableware production, food storage, cooking and waste treatment are modelled using literature data or models. The results of the analysis show that the food production phase is relevant to almost all assessed impact categories (contribution higher than 65%). The exception is represented by photochemical oxidation impact categories in which the larger impact is linked to the transportation phase. The environmental impacts associated to the tableware production, food storage and cooking are relevant to global warming and global energy requirement (contributions higher than 7%). The scenario analysis of potential actions aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of the catering service shows that, to obtain a more sustainable food sector, strategies must be implemented along the entire food supply chain and considering a wide range of environmental impact categories.

Climate change is going to have significant impacts among a wide range of areas and domains, including the building sector, characterized by constructions which may not be designed to be resilient to the evolutions in the warming climate that will occur in the next decades. The chapter investigates methodologies and approaches connected to the assessment of the effects of climate change to the energy use within the building sector. Methodologies are compared and the most relevant future trends expected are traced for the current century.