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Cost–benefit analysis for energy policies
Published in Jacopo Torriti, Appraising the Economics of Smart Meters, 2020
Because the environmental performance of the energy sector has been subject to higher degrees of scrutiny, questions were raised about whether EIA was the right tool to address the challenges associated with energy supply (Wood, 2003). Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is designed to address environmental issues at a higher level of planning, which may take place at a regional, national and super-national scale. This is consistent with the idea that environmental protection needs to be embedded into energy frameworks at early phases of conception. The main origins of strategic environmental assessment in the EU relate to the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42). SEA is supposed to complement EIA for strategic actions. Strategic action is a more nebulous process than the formal submission of a development proposal, as in EIAs. Thus, SEAs address concepts rather than particular activities and must deal with incremental and non-linear policy processes (Wood & Dejeddour, 1992). Because it is focused on strategic actions, SEA is designed to include a stronger consideration of alternative options than EIA. The environment is often singled out in SEA, more so than in EIA or CBA, in large part because of the need to bolster its importance relative to the economic and social dimensions (Thérivel & Partidário, 1996). It is not clear which, if any, applications within the energy sectors require a strategic environmental assessment, and Jay (2010) notes that strategic environmental assessment has not been extensively adopted in the area of energy production.
Tools for Sustainability Assessment
Published in Toolseeram Ramjeawon, Introduction to Sustainability for Engineers, 2020
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can be seen as an improvement of and a complement to the EIA. While EIAs are used at the project level looking at a physical object, SEAs are intended to provide the tool for influencing decision-making at an earlier stage when plans and programs – which give rise to individual projects – are being developed. They consider a greater scale and longer time interval than project EIAs. Impact predictions are subject to much greater uncertainty, but the time for data gathering is often longer and the degree of detail required is much less than that for project evaluations. SEAs take the impact assessment “upstream” into planning rather than outline design and broaden is scope in space and time. SEAs can be useful and effective for a number of applications where SEAs are not formally required. For example, SEA could be a useful tool for energy or waste management policies developed at national level. While first generation SEAs were conducted as extended EIAs, following the same logic and structure with the generation of a report rather than mainstreaming, second-generation SEAs are more process-oriented and are geared toward mainstreaming sustainability issues involving all relevant stakeholders as well as capacity development. The following report provides information and guidance on EIA and SEA good practice:
Ensuring the sustainable development of ocean energy technologies through environmental assessment laws and policies
Published in Glen Wright, Sandy Kerr, Kate Johnson, Ocean Energy, 2017
Glen Wright, Edward Willsteed, Anne Marie O’Hagan
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic decision support process, aimed at ensuring that environmental considerations are fully accounted for in plan and programme making at a strategic level. SEA provides an additional overarching layer of EA and could play a role in reducing the project-level EIA burden by ensuring a proactive approach to environmental data and impacts at an earlier stage in the development of an activity or industry.66 SEA is undertaken either independently or in the course of a wider MSP process (see later in the chapter). The early conception of SEA was as an extension of project-level EIA, centred on the production of a written report. More recent formulations, now considered good practice, instead recognise SEA as an iterative, proactive and integrated process for evaluating the environmental impacts of a strategic programme or plan.
Evaluation of suppliers in the tannery industry based on emergy accounting analysis: implications for resource conservation in emerging economies
Published in International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 2022
Koppiahraj Karuppiah, Bathrinath Sankaranarayanan, Syed Mithun Ali
Many sustainability measurement tools EIA, social life cycle assessment (SLCA), a strategic environmental assessment (SEA), and eco-efficiency (EE) analysis, are currently utilised (Shinkhede et al. 2021). However, these methods also have limitations. For example, SLCA analysis the advantages and disadvantages involved in product development from a social perspective. SLCA is an extension of the life cycle assessment (LCA) concept. SLCA mainly focuses on how product development affects the environment and society (Hosseinijou, Mansour, and Shirazi 2014). For instance, during mining processes, natural resources are consumed in large quantities and have an adverse impact on humans. With SLCA, it is possible to estimate the stage which harms humans. Similarly, SEA focuses on the activities carried out during product development. Eco-efficiency primarily focuses on resource efficiency. Each of these methods is capable of evaluating a specific domain. With each of these techniques, EMA can be integrated as an evaluation tool.
Mega transport projects and sustainable development: lessons from a multi case study evaluation of international practice
Published in Journal of Mega Infrastructure & Sustainable Development, 2019
E. John Ward, Pantelis Skayannis
A key finding from the above analysis is that 93% of the projects studied could not be identified as having taken into account in any significant manner sustainable development principles based on the notion and multi-dimensions such principles had attained at the time of the OMEGA 2 Project. Furthermore, while the majority of the MTPs reviewed undertook EIAs, only 23% of these included EIAs during the project conceptual stage considered the point at which an EIA’s outcome had the greatest potential for a positive impact on a project’s decision making. This represents lost opportunities that need to be revisited especially in retrofitting exercises. It is evident that the process of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), whilst not available for the majority of the case studies,9 may have improved the situation, given that it helps to lay down the ground work for sustainable development at the earliest stages.
Using transboundary environmental security to manage the Mekong River: China and South-East Asian Countries
Published in International Journal of Water Resources Development, 2018
The potential problem-solving power of an environmental security framework represents a second strategy to push for adaptive reforms. As previous security scholarship linking resource scarcity with violence and instability has shown, nation-states will often continue to act unilaterally until environmental conditions have deteriorated to the point of social conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1999). To reduce this likelihood, the environmental security approach accented here focuses on the benefits of collectively managing ecosystem, economic, social, and especially political risks for countries that share transboundary resources. This shift would represent the geopolitical equivalent of using strategic environmental assessment over narrow, sector-by-sector assessments (for an example, see Integrated Centre for Environmental Management, 2010). Environmental security emphasizes that without such collaborative action, state stability in a rapidly changing world will (at some point) be reduced.