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Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UAB Geographically explicit datasets reflecting local management of crops are needed to help improve direct nitrous oxide (N2O) emission inventories. Yet, the lack of geographically explicit datasets of relevant factors influencing the emissions make it difficult to estimate them in such way. Particularly, for local peri-urban agriculture, spatially explicit datasets of crop type, fertilizer use, irrigation, and emission factors (EFs) are hard to find, yet necessary for evaluating and promoting urban self-sufficiency, resilience, and circularity. We spatially distribute these factors for the peri-urban agriculture in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) and create N2O emissions maps using crop-specific EFs as well as Tier 1 IPCC EFs for comparison. Further, the role of the soil types is qualitatively assessed. When compared to Tier 1 IPCC EFs, we find 15% more emissions (i.e. 7718 kg N2O-N year−1) than those estimated with the crop-specific EFs (i.e. 6533 kg N2O-N year−1) for the entire AMB. Emissions for most rainfed crop areas like cereals (e.g. oat and barley) and non-citric fruits (e.g. cherries and peaches), which cover 24% and 13% of AMB's peri-urban agricultural area respectively, are higher with Tier 1 EF. Conversely, crop-specific EFs estimate higher emissions for irrigated horticultural crops (e.g. tomato, artichoke) which cover 33% of AMB's peri-urban agricultural area and make up 70% of the total N2O emissions (4588 kg N2O-N year−1 using crop-specific EFs). Mapping the emissions helps evaluate spatial variability of key factors such as fertilizer use and irrigation of crops but carry uncertainties due to downscaling regional data to represent urban level data gaps. It also highlighted core emitting areas. Further the usefulness of the outputs on mitigation, sustainability and circularity studies are briefly discussed.

Geographically explicit datasets reflecting local management of crops are needed to help improve direct nitrous oxide (N

Although energy models advance rapidly in terms of technical and techno-economic details, social and political aspects and environmental burdens beyond greenhouse gas emissions are currently underrepresented. However, in light of the European Green Deal and the EU Energy Union Strategy, models must advance in terms of social and environmental considerations to support decision- and policymakers in adequately addressing that environmental burden and to put “citizens at its core” of the energy transition. In this deliverable, we present key user-needs for environmental and social aspects that need to be better represented in energy system models (Section 2), and how we have developed and adapted the modelling tools ENVIRO, QTDIAN, and ATOM in response to the identified user needs. We show three main user needs regarding social aspects, specifically (i) social impacts on energy politics and policies, (ii) the social acceptance of energy technologies and infrastructure, and (iii) consumers’ behavior in energy models. We furthermore show that users consider relevant the following factors within the environmental aspects of energy scenarios: (iv) demand of raw materials/ circularity, (v) the implications on nature and biodiversity, as well as (vi) full life-cycle impacts and externalization. ENVIRO and QTDIAN are being developed within SENTINEL in a participatory process by engaging with stakeholders in the information and development stages of the model implementation. In contrast, ATOM is adapted by considering user-needs especially in the implementation stage. We conclude that we have benefited from the insights of model users and other stakeholders, and that this will allow us to make our modelling tools fit-for-purpose. All three modelling tools will support decision-makers by answering the most important of the questions users have risen within the SENTINEL stakeholder engagement process. Model-linking within the WP2 and other WPs will ensure that the understanding of environmental and social aspects is strengthened in energy system models and will be embedded in the overall SENTINEL platform.

The Fitness Check on EU water legislation concluded that there is a need to integrate water issues into other policies such as those related to urban planning. The increase of population in urban areas is expected to raise urban food demand about 50% to 60% globally by 2050. This intensifies the use of water for irrigation purposes as urban planners implement peri-urban agriculture as a way to increase food security and protect ecosystem services from urbanization. If not properly planned, urban and peri-urban agriculture can result in increasing pressures over water resources, such as aquifer depletion or nitrate pollution which impact the overall status of the water bodies. As cities start promoting local agriculture, it is important to provide policy makers with tools to determine the impacts of food production on water resources, from a geo-referenced, systemic water-energy-food perspective.In this work, we propose a method for the regionalized assessment of the tradeoffs between peri-urban food production potential and the associated impacts over water resources and apply it to the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB). AMB is the most populated urban area of the Mediterranean coast and sixth in Europe. With over 5 million people, the AMB only produces between 7% and 10% of its food demand and the new Metropolitan Urban Master Plan (PDU) scenarios foresee a growth in agricultural land of up to 20%.The method we propose includes three stages. First, we map peri-urban agricultural land uses available from the local land use classification by CREAF and reclassify them to Copernicus’ CORINE land cover taxonomy in order to facilitate replicability and comparability of results. Second, we use the Water Framework Directive water body status index (high, good, moderate, poor, bad) to create physical vulnerability maps of water bodies. Third, we study how water use relates to water impacts using the vulnerability maps. Following this method, we assess the water-food tradeoffs for four scenarios of agricultural land change, classifying agricultural land according to their food supply potential and water impacts. This method can be used to assess agriculture in other metropolitan regions.This work is part of the research developed in the ERC Project URBAG: Integrated System Analysis of Urban Vegetation and Agriculture.

Green spaces are known to provide a number of benefits to urban areas. In order to make green spaces more accessible to people in urban regions, the EU has launched some important initiatives that place green infrastructure (GI) development as a top priority in urban planning, contributing to the paradigm of making more sustainable and smarter cities for everyone. However, some GI development might bring unexpected impacts that are observable only with a systemic analysis. For instance, an increased surface of green rooftops might serve as a source of local food production and reduce the need of the buildings’ air conditioning at the expense of increased water and fertilizer use. Despite this shift of focus in urban planning priorities, few studies assess tradeoffs between water, energy and food metabolism of different GI alternatives. An important reason for this gap is that current methods for the analysis of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in the urban metabolism lack a transdisciplinary approach.To fill that gap, we propose using two system analysis methods: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Multi-Scale Integrated Assessment of SocioEcosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM), to assess the WEF nexus in an urban region in the context of GI. Furthermore, the WEF flows are georeferenced to understand their impact on the urban landscape. Based on this georeferenced analysis of land use and land use change, we 1) complete an inventory of functions associated to different land uses with their related inputs and outputs, 2) study function-related environmental pressures with LCA, and 3) assess the systemic impacts of relevant functions over domestic and alien ecosystems and WEF supply systems.We develop this innovative approach using the municipality of Sant Climent de Llobregat, in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB), as a case study. Sant Climent covers 1.6% of the AMB surface and is currently undergoing a GI restructuring process focused on recovering formal agricultural land (currently lost to forest) for highly profitable cherry production. We provide a systemic study that informs about the resource demand and environmental impacts these changes may imply. Data is compiled in collaboration with regional research centers, from local utility companies, planning offices of different towns, statistical yearbooks for Catalonia and Spain, and LCA databases. The work is an on-going collaboration with the AMB government as it develops the Urban Development Plant (PDU) that will set the land use related urbanism policy guidelines from 2021 on. We present a diagnose of the current state of the WEF metabolism in Sant Climent. We identify geographically explicit hotspots, where competition of the resources and unexpected domestic or alien environmental impacts arise. These hotspots are compared against land to be transformed to highlight the best and worst areas for transformation. We expect that in a later stage, these results will feed a scenario assessment of the systemic impacts of the proposed actions of the new PDU.This work is part of the research developed in the ERC Project URBAG: Integrated System Analysis of Urban Vegetation and Agriculture.

Altres ajuts: Institut de Cultura, Ajuntament de Barcelona. Grant number 19S01360-006 Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Micromobility is often thought of as a sustainable solution to many urban mobility challenges. The literature to date, however, has struggled to find consensus on the sustainability of shared and electric scooters, e-bikes, and e-mopeds. This paper uses a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to calculate the impacts of micromobility modes in three categories: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Particulate Matter Formation, and Ozone Formation. It does so by incorporating the self-reported modal change of each transportation mode: shared e-moped, shared e-bicycle, shared bicycle, and personal e-scooter. The results show that modal change brought by the introduction of shared e-mopeds and shared e-bicycles caused an increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while shared bicycles and personal electric scooters decreased GHG emissions. All micromobility modes except personal e-scooters increased particulate matter emissions, but decreased those which were emitted within the city, while they all decreased NOx. The findings of this study suggest new micromobility services are not always the best environmental solution for urban mobility, unless the eco-design of vehicles is improved, and they are strategically used and deployed as part of a holistic vision for transport policy.

Water accounting is an unresolved issue in metabolism studies. Through epistemological analysis, we show that the problem resides in the conceptualization of social metabolism. Social metabolism has its origins in the analysis of societal energetics, which has led to an exclusive focus on society and a representation based on linear throughputs at a single scale. Whereas fossil energy resources constitute a mere stock flow for society, water constitutes a set of both funds and flows essential for the maintenance of the internal organization and stability of society and ecosystems. This means that societies and ecosystems need water for different reasons. Consequently, the analysis of water requires the simultaneous adoption of multiple narratives and scales. The development of hydrology toward a socio-eco-hydrology (SE-hydrology) deals with this multidimensionality, but lacks a conceptualization of the coupled human-water system useful to integrate the assessment of water processes at different rates and scales. We propose a conceptual framework, based on the multiscale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism approach, that combines the perspectives of SE-hydrology and social metabolism. This framework describes society and the embedding ecosystem as two distinct levels of the same hierarchical system (i.e., the socioecological system), expressing two distinct, but tightly interconnected, metabolic patterns (societal and ecosystem) at different spatiotemporal scales. Using food grain production in Punjab as an example, we show that this framework can accommodate the multiple interpretations of social metabolism found in different scientific fields

Water is a precious resource in arid rural areas with irrigated agriculture. Nonetheless, water and agricultural policies in Europe show different management scopes and objectives, usually translated in divergent drivers of rural change. This paper has a double aim: to propose a specific method for quantitative biophysical analysis of water use in rural systems with the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism approach and to show the usefulness of this method for the assessment of the integration of water and agricultural policies. The river basin scale is chosen, since it is the socioecological unit for water management established in the water framework directive 2000/60/CE. A multi-scale water use accounting is provided for a Mediterranean river basin in Andalusia, integrating water cycle, ecosystems and social levels. Particularly focusing on agricultural production, a relevant set of indicators is proposed in order to analyze and compare different metabolic patterns. Finally, the integration of water and agricultural planning is assessed in terms of external (biophysical) and internal (economic, institutional) constraints of the new water-use patterns generated by the scenarios posed in these policies. While on a European level water policy is ambitious in terms of ecological conservation, the lack of integration within the common agricultural policy and the entanglement of multiple scales of political and economic organization of local ruralities blur its priority in a rather slow transition to a new water culture.

Altres ajuts: Greenhouses to Reduce CO2 on Roofs (GROOF) project. Grant Numbers: UE. Interreg NWE 474, (2017-2021) Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M Housing estates, that is, mass social housing on middle- and high-rise apartment blocks, in urban areas are found all over the world with very similar constructive patterns and a multiplicity of environmental and socio-economic problems. In this regard, such areas are optimal for the implementation of a roof mosaic which involves applying a combination of urban farming, solar energy, and harvesting rainwater systems (decentralized systems) on unoccupied roofs. To design sustainable and productive roof mosaic scenarios, we develop an integrated framework through a multi-scale (municipality, building, and household) and multi-dimensional analysis (environmental and socio-economic, structural, and functional) to optimize the supply of essential resources (food, energy, and water). The proposed workflow was applied to a housing estate to rehabilitate unused rooftops (66,433 m2). First, using the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism methodology, we determined metabolic rates across buildings and municipality levels, which did not vary significantly (12.60-14.50 g/h for vegetables, 0.82-1.11 MJ/h for electricity, 0.80-1.11 MJ/h for heating, and 5.62-6.59 L/h for water). Second, based on a participatory process involving stakeholders to qualitatively analyze potential scenarios further in terms of preferences, five scenarios were chosen. These rooftop scenarios were found to improve the resource self-sufficiency of housing estate residents by providing 42-53% of their vegetable consumption, 9-35% of their electricity use, and 38-200% of their water needs depending on the scenario. Boosting new urban spaces of resource production involves citizens in sites which face social and economic needs.

The European 2030 Climate and Energy strategy marks the effort of the EU to implement the Paris Agreement commitments. To that end, most member states plan to increase the share of renewable energy and natural gas in the energy mix. However, the deterioration of the relations with Russia, the closure of the conventional gas field in Groningen, and the Brexit challenge natural gas supply within the EU. In this report we study the potential of a European shale gas sector as alternative to ensure natural gas supply. The shale gas revolution that happened in the USA around the mid-2000s instigated a general wave of optimism about the potential of natural gas to become the main fuel for “clean” heating, power generation and transport. The premise that despite its environmental impacts and financial burden, shale gas extraction is a strategic national-security issue was maintained in the USA until gas prices sank in 2014. As of 2020 the first public voices demanding a ban can be heard in the US. There is a vast literature that assess the impacts of shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing over the environment, the people and the local and national economies. However, their recommendations tend to be discordant. This type of assessments can greatly benefit from a transdisciplinary analysis. In this report, we use Quantitative Story-Telling (QST, see section Materials and Methods for further information about QST), an iterative technique that combines narrative analysis with multi-scale integrated assessment. The narrative assessment considered the evolution of the informal narrative (for the general public) against the difference between gas extraction cost and market prices. The informal narrative greatly influences the formal narrative of the European Commission, which was assessed with an analysis of legal text and a round of interviews. We assessed the socio-economic viability and the environmental feasibility to meet the EU natural gas demand in a situation of challenged supply by developing a shale gas sector in the EU. More concretely, we check whether an hypothetical shale gas sector could “contribute almost half of the EU’s total gas production and meet about around 10 % of the EU gas demand by 2035” (COM2014/23 final page 4) while contributing to reduce GHG emissions and without contradicting the principles of the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC). We concluded that: Shale gas net extraction (raw extraction minus energy use) would not be enough to meet EU needs. Some member states would be able to cover their needs with domestic extraction but current legislative framework give them freedom to sell their overflow out of Europe, thus not contributing to EU energy security. Due to the lowering of the gas prices, a fairly big high of wells will not cover their construction and maintenance economic expensive Methane emissions will be higher than for the extraction of conventional gas. Most of those emissions would come from wells that are not providing a surplus of energy. There are a few river basins that might not be able to meet the WFD commitments for the third review period. Most of the water use comes from the less productive or even unproductive wells.

ENBIOS(Environmental and Bioeconomic System Analysis)is an assessment framework designed for the assessment of theenvironmental impacts and resource use of energy pathways resulting from energy system optimization models (ESOMs). It integrates Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)and Social Metabolism Assessment using the Multi-Scale Integrated Assessment of Socio-Ecosystem Metabolism(MuSIASEM).It has been been co-designed with decision makers and energy modelers within the EU project SENTINEL. The related python packageenbiostakes data on energy system design and impact assessment methods to return a characterization matrix filled with bioeconomic and environmental indicators. The deliverable includes a brief introduction to the framework and the python package, the first version of the quick start guide and the user manual.