Marginal cost curves (MCCs) are popular decision-support tools for assessing and ranking the cost-effectiveness of different options in environmental policy and management. However, conventional MCC approaches have been criticized for lack of transparency and disregard for complexity; not accounting for interaction effects between measures; ignoring ancillary benefits and costs; and not considering intertemporal dynamics. In this paper, we present an approach to address these challenges using a system dynamics (SD)-based model for producing dynamic MCCs. We describe the approach by applying it to evaluate efforts to address water scarcity in a hypothetical, but representative, Swedish city. Our results show that the approach effectively addresses all four documented limitations of conventional MCC methods. They also show that combining MCCs with behavior-over-time graphs and causal-loop diagrams can lead to new policy insights and support a more inclusive decision-making process. 

RISE har fått en förfrågan av Regeringskansliets bioekonomiutredning att sammanställa en bilaga om industriell symbios. Utifrån samtal mellan RISE och utredare har bilagan strukturerats enligt: Ett första avsnitt som diskuterar vad industriell symbios är. Denna diskussion baseras på två definitioner som dels beskriver symbios från olika perspektiv, dels beskriver utvecklingen av begreppet över tid. I avsnittet ingår också en kort diskussion kring skillnader mellan begreppen bioraffinaderi och industriell symbios. Industriell symbios är oberoende av industrisektor, fokus ligger på skapandet av värde från resurser som inte nyttjas till fullo i olika sektorer. Att koppla symbios till bioraffinaderier ger en möjlighet dels att ta ett systemperspektiv på hur bioraffinaderier kan bli mer resurseffektiva, dels att koppla symbiosaktiviteter till utvecklingen av ett fossilfritt samhälle. Ett andra avsnitt som diskuterar olika drivkrafter för skapandet av industriell symbios, både historiskt och kopplat till agendor/strategier för samhällsomställning. Vi argumenterar att det är värdefullt att koppla symbiosutveckling till större omställningsstrategier som till exempel bioekonomistrategin. Då ökar potentialen för att etableringen av industriella symbioser skapar långsiktigt värde. Ett tredje avsnitt som diskuterar hur industriell symbios skapas. I detta avsnitt beskrivs olika utgångspunkter för symbiosaktiviteter (självorganiserade, faciliterade, planerade) och värdet av facilitering lyfts. Olika typer av stöd vid utveckling, och perspektiv som är viktiga att inkludera belyses tillsammans med vikten av det mänskliga perspektivet. Mycket av det som diskuteras i avsnittet gällande att effektivisera och förenkla hur symbioser skapas kopplar till hinder och angreppspunkter inom bioekonomistrategin. En slutsats är att det bör finnas ett stort värde för utvecklingen av både industriell symbios och en resurseffektiv bioekonomi i Sverige att inkorporera industriell symbios i strategin och på så sätt vidga perspektiven på hinder och möjligheter. Ett fjärde avsnitt som kort beskriver några exempel på bioekonomikopplade symbiosaktiviteter i Sverige. Det har skett en snabb utveckling av symbiosaktiviteter under de senaste tio åren i Sverige, och idag pågår aktiviteter i stort sett i hela Sverige där industriell symbios används som begrepp.

Study region: Fårö island, part of Region Gotland, Sweden. Study focus: Despite its importance for proactive planning and management, understanding of how future climate and socioeconomic trends may interact to influence water supply and demand at sub-regional scale remains limited for the Nordic region. We aim to close this knowledge gap by developing a combined social and hydrological simulation model for Fårö island in the Baltic Sea. We use multivariate Monte Carlo simulations to explore the effects of future climate scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) on local groundwater supplies, and subsequent impacts on the housing sector, tourism sector, and municipal water supply system in the period 2020–2050. New hydrological insights for the region: Our results suggest that groundwater storage will remain critically low in the coming 30 years, with a 60–70% probability of the groundwater head falling to lower levels than experienced in the past 60 years. Low water availability and widespread saltwater intrusion will constrain housing and tourism development by up to 11% and 30% respectively. To sustain growth, the tourist sector will become increasingly reliant on water from private wells, and supplementary water deliveries from neighboring regions will be required to meet water demand on the municipal grid. © 2022 The Authors

Ensuring sustainable management and an adequate supply of freshwater resources is a growing challenge around the world. Even in historically water abundant regions climate change together with population growth and economic development are processes that are expected to contribute to an increase in permanent and seasonal water scarcity in the coming decades. Previous studies have shown how policies to address water scarcity often fail to deliver lasting improvements because they do not account for how these processes influence, and are influenced by, human-water interactions shaping water supply and demand. Despite significant progress in recent years, place-specific understanding of the mechanisms behind human-water feedbacks remain limited, particularly in historically water abundant regions. To this end, we here present a Swedish case study where we, by use of a qualitative system dynamics approach, explore how human-water interactions have contributed to seasonal water scarcity at the local-to-regional scale. Our results suggest that the current approach to address water scarcity by inter-basin water transports contributes to increasing demand by creating a gap between the perceived and actual state of water resources among consumers. This has resulted in escalating water use and put the region in a state of systemic lock-in where demand-regulating policies are mitigated by increases in water use enabled by water transports. We discuss a combination of information and economic policy instruments to combat water scarcity, and we propose the use of quantitative simulation methods to further assess these strategies in future studies. © 2021, The Author(s).

The EU27 annually generates 90 Mt of food waste, and approximately 40 % of this waste is generated during manufacturing. The food processing industry needs to develop improved and sustainable solutions for waste valorisation and re-use. The project DRALOD addresses this issue since it aims at design, integration and assessment of the performance of a heat recovery system in connection with an innovative low-temperature air drying unit where high moisture food waste is dewatered and sold as a by-product with preserved nutritional ingredients. The air used for drying is preheated using solar heat and a biomass boiler, and in this project the potential benefits of integration of a heat recovery system have been investigated. Due to the impurities available in the humid exhaust air from the dryer, the heat recovery is designed with two principal systems; a wet scrubber condensation system and a heat pump system. Simulations using hourly meteorological data from Madrid have been made for the total system with heat recovery, and the generated results have been used as inputs in a techno-economic analysis in order to assess the integration of the heat recovery and how sensitive different economic parameters and assumptions are for the results. It can be concluded from the assessment that the prices of electricity and biofuel will have a high impact on the economic performance and design. For the integration of the heat recovery system to be economically justifiable it is estimated, given assumptions made in this analysis, that the electricity cost needs to be less than 5 times higher than the biofuel cost. 

Bioprocesses based on (ligno-)cellulosic biomass are highly prone to batch-to-batch variations. Varying raw material compositions and enzyme activities hamper the prediction of process yields, economic feasibility and environmental impacts. Commonly, these performance indicators are averaged over several experiments to select suitable process designs. The variabilities in performance indicators resulting from variable process inputs are often neglected, causing a risk for faulty performance predictions and poor process design choices during scale-up. In this paper, a multi-scale variability analysis framework is presented that quantifies the effects of process input variations on performance indicators. Using the framework, a kinetic model describing simultaneous saccharification and ethanol fermentation was integrated with a flowsheet process model, techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment in order to evaluate a wheat straw-based ethanol biorefinery. Hydrolytic activities reported in the literature for the enzyme cocktail Cellic® CTec2, ranging from 62 to 266 FPU·mL−1, were used as inputs to the multi-scale model to compare the variability in performance indicators under batch and multi-feed operation for simultaneous saccharification and fermentation. Bioprocess simulations were stopped at ethanol productivities ≤0.1 g·L−1·h−1. The resulting spreads in process times, hydrolysis yields, and fermentation yields were incorporated into flowsheet, techno-economic and life cycle scales. At median enzymatic activities the payback time was 7%, equal to 0.6 years, shorter under multi-feed conditions. All other performance indicators showed insignificant differences. However, batch operation is simpler to control and well-established in industry. Thus, an analysis at median conditions might favor batch conditions despite the disadvantage in payback time. Contrary to median conditions, analyzing the input variability favored multi-feed operation due to a lower variability in all performance indicators. Variabilities in performance indicators were at least 50% lower under multi-feed operation. Counteracting the variability in enzymatic activities by adjusting the amount of added enzyme instead resulted in higher uncertainties in environmental impacts. The results show that the robustness of performance indicators against input variations must be considered during process development. Based on the multi-scale variability analysis process designs can be selected which deliver more precise performance indicators at multiple system levels. 

RISE Research Institutes of Sweden is a group of research and technology organisations. RISE is a leading innovation partner working global cooperation with academia, enterprise and society to create value, growth and competitiveness through research excellence and innovation.

In the area of Energy, RISE has developed innovation Roadmaps covering:

• Energy Efficient Transport
• Electric Power System
• Energy Efficient and Smart Buildings
• Sustainable Thermal Processes
• Efficient Energy Use in Industry
• Decarbonisation of Basic Industries

These Roadmaps describe development pathways for technologies, non-technical elements (market design, user behaviours, policies, etc.) and key actors that deliver on a plausible, desirable vision for each respective innovation area in 2030. These Roadmaps are intended to support RISE’s strategic planning and development, but should be relevant reading for anyone interested in energy innovation in Sweden.