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DIRECTOR’S COLUMN
Programme director Edgar Hertwich
edgar.hertwich@ntnu.no
INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY - READY FOR THE
LIMELIGHT?
Environmental policy once again seems to
pay scant attention to the new field of in-
dustrial ecology, relying instead on require-
ments for emissions control equipment and
good housekeeping instead to achieve its
first, significant and important successes.
No wonder, we first solved the easy prob-
lems – basic hygiene and local air and water
pollution. As the wicked problems – climate
change, biodiversity loss, and resource
scarcity – have fundamentally worsened,
however, demand for sophisticated systems
analysis and a coherent intellectual frame-
work has increased. What we see, today,
is that industrial ecology has entered the
limelight of government decision making,
being the basis for and delivering instru-
ments to environmental regulation. Even for
technical fixes, industrial ecology delivers
important insights: for more than ten years
now, life cycle assessment has been used in
the EU’s Integrated Pollution Prevention and
Control framework to identify the best avail-
able techniques to limit pollution. Extended
producer responsibility was initially synony-
mous to product take-back, leading to more
recycling and a safer handling of products,
but it has now been extended to address life
cycle energy use of electric and electronic
equipment.
Having been ignored for decades, resource
scarcity has come in the limelight again in
the past five years, with every industrialized
country engaging in major policy initia-
tives to secure their industries’ access to
resources, following the lead of East Asian
economies. Resource efficiency has become
one of seven policy priorities in the EU,
as evidenced by the Flagship initiative for
resource efficiency. This initiative relies ex-
tensively on insights from industrial ecology,
drawing, e.g., on the International Resource
Panel where I serve together with prominent
colleagues such as Thomas Graedel, Yuichi
Moriguchi, and Marina Fischer-Kowalski.
Concepts drawn especially from material
and substance flow analyses have become
important for the definition of resource
efficiency indicators. Studies such as the
Carbon footprint of nations have provided
the rationale for and influenced the revision
of the UN’s System of Economic and Environ-
mental Accounts.
In some areas, however, the policy applica-
tion of industrial ecology tools and methods
raises discomfort. One such area is the use of
life cycle assessment in performance based
regulation of transportation fuels, as prom-
ulgated in California and the EU. The EU’s
renewables directive requires a 6% reduc-
tion of the GHG intensity of transportation
fuels by 2020. These standards require the
reduction of life cycle greenhouse gas emis-
sion of transportation fuels, in the EU’s case
by 6% by 2020, also considering indirect
land use change. This requirement carries a
substantial economic significance, as a lot
of fuel is sold. The concern of colleagues is
that LCA is too inaccurate to supply a good
enough estimate of GHG emissions. Experts
disagree on assumptions, modeling ap-
proach and system boundaries, significantly
influencing and even drawing into question
the emission reductions to be achieved. Are
the answers provided by LCA good enough
to support the quantification of regulatory
targets?
There are many other fields where strict
regulatory requirements meet scientific un-
certainty. The regulation of toxic substances
comes to my mind, where permits and emis-
sion standards are set in the face of much
larger uncertainty. Regulatory agencies de-
vise procedural answers of how to deal with
uncertainty. Of course the upshot is that we
will ultimately never be certain whether the
emission reductions achieved are really 6%.
But what is really the alternative to the use
of the best available scientific information,
in spite of all its uncertainty? The only logical
alternative is not to regulate the life cycle
emission of transportation fuels. Given the
difficulty of substantially reducing energy
demand from transportation, I don’t think
that that is a good alternative. Industrial
Ecology’s findings are relevant, despite their
uncertainty.
Industrial Ecology programme
IndEcol is a matrix organization coordinating
teaching and research in industrial ecology at
theNorwegianUniversityofScienceandTech-
nology, NTNU. The programme was initiated
in 1994 on suggestion of Norwegian indus-
try. A comprehensive educational curriculum
was launched in 1999 and turned into an in-
ternational MSc programme in 2005. Faculty
and PhD students affiliated with IndEcol also
belong to disciplinary departments where
they are employed. In 2012, 27 MsS
degrees were awarded and 4 MSc degrees
in Energy and Environmental Engineer-
ing were completed with supervisors from
the IndEcol Programme. 21 new MSc stu-
dents, among those 13 international stu-
dents, were admitted. During 2012, 2 PhD
theses were submitted but were not de-
fended until early 2013. 16 PhD students, 6
Post Docs and 6 Researchers were affiliated
with IndEcol. 6 book chapters, 72 journal pa
pers, and 1 IndEcol report were published.
Faculty
Committee:
Casper
Boks,
Helge
Brattebø
(MSc
programme
director),
Hanne
Sæther,
Annik
Magerholm Fet, Edgar Hertwich (Pro-
gramme director), Christian Klöckner,
Daniel Müller, Anders H. Strømman.
Student representatives in 2012:
Blane Grann and Anna Karoline
Petersen
PhD/PostDoc representative:
Guillaume Majeau-Bettez