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Cleaner and Sustainable Industry

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Resources and Sustainable Utilization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2021) | Viewed by 3000

Special Issue Editors

Escuela Politécnica Superior, Department of Civil Engineering, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
Interests: sustainability assessment, optimization, and management; project management; sustainable assessment for decision-making; sustainable design in construction and energy engineering; sustainable energy planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Escuela Politécnica Superior, Department of Civil Engineering, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
Interests: project management; sustainability assessment, optimization, and management; sustainable assessment for decision-making; sustainable design in construction and energy engineering; sustainable energy planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Ciencias de la Navegación e Ingeniería Marina, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain
Interests: energy economics; sustainable energy planning; sustainability assessment, optimization, and management; sustainable assessment for decision-making; project management; sustainable design in energy engineering; industrial heritage; sustainability assessment and optimization in the energy sector; multi-criteria decision methods; optimization techniques; Monte Carlo simulation; energy planning; renewable and non-renewable power plants; life-cycle analysis in the energy sector
Escola Politécnica de Enxeñaría de Ferrol, Universidade da Coruña, 15403 Ferrol, Spain
Interests: sustainability assessment and optimization in the energy sector; multicriteria decision methods; optimization techniques; Monte Carlo simulation; energy planning; renewable and nonrenewable power plants; life-cycle analysis in the energy sector
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

If we continue with the same growth, production, and consumption dynamics in the years to come, the Earth’s ecosystems and the global population will not be able to withstand the impacts produced by human action [1]. Along this line, the concepts of sustainable development and integral sustainability have significantly gained importance in recent years [2,3] in industry. Both terms not only consider environmental aspects, but also economic, social (including ethical and cultural concerns), and technical factors.

At present, strict integral sustainability is unattainable, since almost all human activity impacts the planet: consumption of raw materials and energy, and emissions to the atmosphere, water, and soil. Notwithstanding, it is now necessary to pursue integral sustainability in the industry, since the planet is increasingly showing alarming signs that may be irreversible if an action is not taken.

Cleaner production is a concept with a broad scope. Its aim is manufacturing cleaner products and achieving earth-friendly processes and services by reducing the environmental impacts while increasing the efficiency of the use of energy, water, and natural and human resources [4]. It is applicable to almost every industrial process in different levels of detail [5,6].

The construction sector is a major source of energy and resources consumption [7]. It also contributes to harming the environment. For example, it is responsible for a considerable percentage of the total greenhouse gas emissions [7,8]. This tendency increases yearly due to the growing population and most of the nations pursuing urbanization and modernization goals [9]. Consequently, cleaner and sustainable strategies and technologies must be adopted [10].

Energy is of paramount importance for the development of every region [1,11,12,13]. Throughout history, humans have used mainly economic and technical criteria when choosing energy alternatives [1]. This must now change quickly. All power plants, both renewables and non-renewables, are facing economic, social, environmental, and technical risks and opportunities to be assessed from a rigorous and scientific point of view [11]. Consequently, decision makers in the energy sector face the challenge of meeting the energy demand, which is growing constantly, and simultaneously promoting the reasonable use of resources, mitigating environmental impacts, and improving the quality of life of people [13]. This must be achieved while ensuring a reasonable life cycle cost. In other words, a sustainable basis is needed.

Although many authors have addressed the cleaner production and sustainability assessment in the industry, substantial room for improvement remains. Sustainability optimization has not received enough attention from the scientific community. Consequently, the aim of this Special Issue is to cover gaps in the current knowledge about cleaner production and sustainability in industry by sharing case studies, problems, solutions, new methodologies, techniques and tools, as well as novel ideas and technologies that help to achieve a transition to a cleaner and more sustainable world.

Thus, recommended topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Sustainability assessment and optimization in the industry, including economic, social, environmental, or technical issues, especially in the manufacturing, construction, and energy sectors.
  • Cleaner and sustainable energy systems.
  • Cleaner and sustainable buildings and infrastructure.
  • Cleaner and sustainable products, processes, and services. Cleaner production processes.
  • Sustainable energy planning.
  • Environmental, social, or economic impacts of energy policies.
  • Renewable energy including but not limited to: biomass, biogas, waste, photovoltaic, solar thermal, onshore and offshore wind, geothermal, hydropower, and wave and tidal energies.
  • Mitigation technologies for environmental impacts.
  • Energy and resources use and consumption in the industry, especially in the manufacturing, construction, and energy sectors.
  • Life cycle analysis in the industry.
  1. Cartelle Barros, J.J.; Lara Coira, M.; de la Cruz López, M.P.; del Caño Gochi, A. Assessing the global sustainability of different electricity generation systems. Energy 2015, 89, 473–489.
  2. Brundtland, G.H.; Khalid, M.; Agnelli, S.; Al‐Athel, S.; Chidzero, B.; Fadika, L.; Hauff, V.; Lang, I.; Shijun, M. Our Common Future; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 1987.
  3. United Nations. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; United Nations: Rio of Janeiro, Brazil, 1992.
  4. Lins, P.S.; Cunha, R.D.A.; Kiperstok, A.; Rapôso, Á.L.Q.R.S.; César, S.F. Opportunities for Cleaner Production (CP) Using Process Flow Analysis: Case Study of a Furniture Manufacturer in the City of Palhoça (SC, Brazil). Sustainability 2020, 12, 863.
  5. Panameño, R.; Gutiérrez-Aguilar, C.M.; Angel, B.E.; Fábio-César, S.; Kiperstok, A. Cleaner Production and LCA as Complementary Tools in Environmental Assessment: Discussing Tradeoffs Assessment in a Case of Study within the Wood Sector in Brazil. Sustainability 2019, 11, 5026.
  6. Leite, R.; Amorim, M.; Rodrigues, M.; Oliveira Neto, G. Overcoming Barriers for Adopting Cleaner Production: A Case Study in Brazilian Small Metal-Mechanic Companies. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4808.
  7. Che, W.W.; Tso, C.Y.; Sun, L.; Ip, D.Y.K.; Lee, H.; Chao, C.Y.H.; Lau, A.K.H. Energy consumption, indoor thermal comfort and air quality in a commercial office with retrofitted heat, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. Energy and Buildings 2019, 201, 202–215.
  8. Zhang, N.; Wang, H.; Gallagher, J.; Song, Q.; Tam, V.W.Y.; Duan, H. A dynamic analysis of the global warming potential associated with air conditioning at a city scale: an empirical study in Shenzhen, China. Environmental Impact Assessment Review 2020, 81, 106354.
  9. Sayadi, S.; Tsatsaronis, G.; Morosuk, T. Dynamic exergetic assessment of heating and cooling systems in a complex building. Energy Conversion and Management 2019, 183, 561–576.
  10. Wang, Y.; Kuckelkorn, J.; Liu, Y. A state of art review on methodologies for control strategies in low energy buildings in the period from 2006 to 2016. Energy and Buildings 2017, 147, 27–40.
  11. Cartelle Barros, J.J.; Lara Coira, M.; de la Cruz López, M.P.; del Caño Gochi, A. Probabilistic life-cycle cost analysis for renewable and non-renewable power plants. Energy 2016, 112, 774–787.
  12. Cartelle Barros, J.J.; Lara Coira, M.; de la Cruz López, M.P.; del Caño Gochi, A. Comparative analysis of direct employment generated by renewable and non-renewable power plants. Energy 2017, 139, 542–554.
  13. Cartelle Barros, J.J.; Lara Coira, M.; de la Cruz López, M.P.; del Caño Gochi, A.; Soares, I. Probabilistic multicriteria environmental assessment of power plants: A global approach. Applied Energy 2020, 260, 114344.

Prof. Dr. Alfredo del Caño Gochi
Dr. María Pilar de la Cruz López
Dr. Juan José Cartelle Barros
Dr. Manuel Lara Coira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • cleaner production
  • sustainability
  • sustainable development
  • cleaner and sustainable energy systems
  • cleaner and sustainable buildings and infrastructures
  • cleaner and sustainable products, processes and services
  • energy efficiency
  • energy and resources use and consumption
  • sustainable energy planning
  • life cycle analysis
  • renewables

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

32 pages, 805 KiB  
Review
Energy-Oriented Production Planning in Industry: A Systematic Literature Review and Classification Scheme
by Hajo Terbrack, Thorsten Claus and Frank Herrmann
Sustainability 2021, 13(23), 13317; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su132313317 - 01 Dec 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2322
Abstract
Scarcity of resources, structural change during the further development of renewable energy sources, and their corresponding costs, such as increasing resource costs or penalties due to dirty production, lead industrial firms to adapt ecological actions. In this regard, research on energy utilization in [...] Read more.
Scarcity of resources, structural change during the further development of renewable energy sources, and their corresponding costs, such as increasing resource costs or penalties due to dirty production, lead industrial firms to adapt ecological actions. In this regard, research on energy utilization in production planning has received increased attention in the last years, resulting in a large number of research articles so far. With the paper at hand, we review the literature on energy-oriented production planning. The aim of this study is to derive similar core issues and related properties along energy-oriented models within hierarchical production planning. For this, we carry out a systematic literature review and analyze and synthesize 375 research articles. We classify the underlying literature with a novel two-dimensional classification scheme and identify three key topics and five frequently found characteristics, which are presented in detail throughout this article. Based on these results, we state several potentials for further research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cleaner and Sustainable Industry)
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