The world is facing many environmental challenges, such as water shortages, food crisis, energy consumption crisis, etc. To overcome these difficulties, a holistic approach is needed in sustainable engineering. This was the motivation of the editors of “Handbook of Sustainable Engineering” who aim at providing a systematic overview of the far-reaching topic.
The book presents 65 papers structured in 7 sections. Each section has its own editor and begins with an introduction in which the editor explains state of the art trends relevant to the section and gives a brief review of papers included.
The first section “Education and Outreach” discusses how educational procedures and curricula can be fine-tuned to build multidisciplinary sustainable engineering mindsets to help improve environmental performance. Over the past 10 years, average product energy consumption was reduced by 25 per cent by “rethinking” the development of new functional principles. To implement a new technological vision, we need to enhance existing subjects by adding environmental concepts and methods (i.e. eco-design, product lifecycle management and lifecycle assessment) and teaching students necessary “think like engineers” skills (e.g. how to define a problem, how to model it quantitatively and how to communicate a solution). These approaches are well-illustrated with the relevant case studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Swiss educational programs.
Almost all topics of current scientific interests in engineering’s education for sustainable development are covered except influence of modern information technologies to the educational processes. The methodological papers refer to the most cited or relevant authors in the field (e.g. A. Tukker, K. Lyons, M. Mani, C. Pezeshki, D. Allen and D. Grasso). Experiences from Asian countries are unfortunately missing.
The second section is devoted to water. Contamination problems are not limited to pollution factors but may also be affected by factors as shortage of food and water, economic instability, social and cultural consumption differences, depletion of self-regulated eco-systems and climate changes. Possible measures are listed, including political (e.g. government support of environmental research and risk assessment), legislative (e.g. the Zugspitze Declaration), economical (i.e. fair trade, distributive justice and changes in consumer habits) and technological (i.e. energy-saving, resource-considerate and low-emission), with explanations of a proper use for each one. Technological measures are also illustrated by the case studies from the following countries: Egypt, Mexico, Iraq and Bangladesh.
Unfortunately, very little theoretical information and no cases are given about water rehabilitation usage and water recycling technologies in developed countries (e.g. the EU, the USA and Japan). Generally, the methodological papers refer to the most cited or relevant authors in the field (e.g. M. Crane, M.C. Newman, J.N. Huckins, T.A. Larsen and P.A. Wilderer), with the exception of Chapter 13.
The third section on “Sustainable Products and Sustainable Production” proposes that manufacturers should pursue a holistic product life-cycle perspective using a range of technics (i.e. eco-design, design for remanufacturing, eco-packaging and material flow cost accounting) to reduce a negative environmental impact not only during a production stage but also during usage and disposal stages.
While the most relevant literature has been cited (e.g. K.M. Lee, W. Wimmer, K. Ishii, J.S. Song and J. Polak), some papers show inconsistent duplication of formulas and a usage of acronyms (e.g. Chapters 27 and 28, acronyms and formulas for “TPI” and “TPA”).
Section four “Sustainable Product Service Systems (PSS) and Sustainable Consumption (SC)” suggest a shift of paradigms from a mere focus on selling a product to providing various product life cycle activities (e.g. maintenance, upgrading, and providing supplies) and satisfying customers’ needs by adapting the service with the same hardware or designing something that is easy to service by the special tools (e.g. requirements analysis, design for sustainability and life cycle simulation). SC concepts aim at changing customers’ behavior by preference of environmentally conscious products. The authors stress that even small shifts of consumption patterns may result in a large effect on sustainability in society (e.g. 80-90 per cent of life cycle CO2 of active products is emitted during usage). Hence, manufacturers can actively engage in SC, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction. This idea is illustrated by a case study from automotive industry about car sharing services.
The fifth section on “Policy and Decision-Making” draws the reader’s attention to two interconnected ideas: firstly, satisfying the consumer’s demand requires the consideration of possible environmental impacts. Still, a holistic assessment of all intended and unintended effects is generally impossible (i.e. it is hard to identify boundaries, a place, time of occurrence and degree of impact on personnel). Moreover, some technologies raise controversial questions (e.g. can we legalize medicine to improve cognitive performance?, can we sacrifice privacy for additional security). Secondly, government activities can diminish or change the demand, i.e. through infrastructure projects etc). On the other hand, the focus of impact is the result of political consensus. The government can even nurture some technologies to make them ready for market competition using different methods of sustainable technology steering (e.g. research subsidies, loans and guaranteed prices for products).
The section would have benefited if the editor would have included a brief review of global environmental governance on international level, add some psychological aspects of irrational political behavior and illustrate that decision making often aims at a short-term perspective and may lead to environmentally disruptive long-term policy.
In the sixth section, the focus is on “Energy Sources of the Future”. The future energy sources should be renewable, efficient in energy conversion, distribution and use, with low environmental impact, accessible and tailor-made for local social and economic conditions. Secondly, we need to provide a correct share of resources (transportation of the energy from place and time of availability to place and time of utilization). The editor gathered papers about solar, biomass, wind, geothermal and water energies (e.g. even 0.1 per cent of the solar incident radiation is enough to satisfy people’s needs). The authors underline main challenges like storages or efficient transport. For instance, electric vehicles are cheaper (due to different government incentives, fuel savings and reduction in insurance premium) and three times more efficient than internal combustion engine. On the other hand, modern batteries (e.g. Ni-Cd, Ni-MH, Ni-Z and Li-ion) provide insufficient energy density and also require special disposal procedures.
Despite the interesting collection of topics, core areas of interest like microbial fuel cells have been left out. Secondly, the selection feels imbalanced, as the editor fails to provide information about traditional, respectively, established “green” technologies (e.g. natural gas has up to 70 per cent efficiency or closed nuclear fuel cycle with fast neutron reactors).
In the seventh section on “New Materials”, the contributions discuss climate change risks and natural resource risks. The former can be reduced by eco-materials and eco-processes by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, for instance a shift to the new energy sources and storages (e.g. by the solid oxide fuel cells [devices to converse the fuel chemical energy into electricity] and by Li-ion batteries and hybrid capacitors), or a usage of materials with low environmental production load and minimal waste (e.g. bioplastic with improved heat resistance, flame retardancy and recyclability). The natural resource risk can be mitigated by the development of alternative materials (e.g. using abundant elements) or by minimization of rare earth and minor elements’ consumption and getting more from the recycling stage by using nanotechnologies.
Although some topics of relevant scientific interest are covered and the authors cite the most relevant papers (e.g. by R. Dominko, K. Halada, B. Jin and D. Rongappa), this section appears rather inconsistent and at times contradictory. Firstly, many papers would better fit into different sections (i.e. Chapters 59 and 60 to the sixth section, 64 to the third section and 65 to the fourth one). Also, the editor fails to describe methods for choosing papers and reasons for omitting important relevant topics (e.g. electrochemical and biosensors, carbon nanotubes and graphene).
Overall, the book’s authors and editors accomplished their underlined goals and succeeded in providing an integrated view of the whole “sustainable engineering” concept. Considering the scale of the topic, the book is to a certain extent misbalanced, and some important issues were left out. The book can be highly recommended for people with engineering background and for environmental enthusiasts. The “Handbook of Sustainable Engineering” combines outstanding research and insights for everyone interested in a sustainable and prosperous future.
