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ON THE SUSTAINABILITY OF INTEGRATED MODEL SYSTEMS WITH INDUSTRIAL, ECOLOGICAL, AND MACROECONOMIC COMPONENTS
Citation:
CABEZAS, H., C. PAWLOWSKI, H. WHITMORE, AND A. L. MAYER. ON THE SUSTAINABILITY OF INTEGRATED MODEL SYSTEMS WITH INDUSTRIAL, ECOLOGICAL, AND MACROECONOMIC COMPONENTS. Presented at 8th Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving & Pollution Reduction (PRES'05), Giadini di Naxox-Taormina, ITALY, May 15 - 18, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
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Description:
At its core, sustainability asks whether the planet will persist into the indefinite future in a regime which is amenable to human existence. The issue of sustainability has ever increasing amounts of natural resources and causing a host of environmental impacts. The management of environmental impacts that are the result of human activities requires an understanding of various forces on a global scale. To begin this process of understanding, we have constructed a simple model system which is closed to mass and not limited to energy. It includes a resource pool, three plant species, three herbivore species, two carnivore species, a human population, a generalized industrial sector, and an inaccessible resource pool meant to represent polluted or otherwise biologically inaccessible mass. There is also a price setting macroeconomic model regulating one of the plant species, one of the herbivores, the industrial sector, and the human population. This is essentially a very aggregated and simplified mini-world. We use this model system to explore the sustainability of some observed trends in the real world such as increasing material consumption by the human population. We also explore and contrast several industrial policy options including the use of bio-based production and non-renewable based production. We further consider industrial policy options that could be used to manage environmental impacts.