IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v4y2012i9p2270-2292d20151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Engineering Sustainability: A Technical Approach to Sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • Marc A. Rosen

    (Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario, L1H 7K4, Canada)

Abstract

Sustainability is a critically important goal for human activity and development. Sustainability in the area of engineering is of great importance to any plans for overall sustainability given 1) the pervasiveness of engineering activities in societies, 2) their importance in economic development and living standards, and 3) the significant impacts that engineering processes and systems have had, and continue to have, on the environment. Many factors that need to be considered and appropriately addressed in moving towards engineering sustainability are examined in this article. These include appropriate selection of resources bearing in mind sustainability criteria, the use of sustainable engineering processes, enhancement of the efficiency of engineering processes and resource use, and a holistic adoption of environmental stewardship in engineering activities. In addition, other key sustainability measures are addressed, such as economics, equity, land use, lifestyle, sociopolitical factors and population. Conclusions are provided related both to pathways for engineering sustainability and to the broader ultimate objective of sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Marc A. Rosen, 2012. "Engineering Sustainability: A Technical Approach to Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(9), pages 1-23, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:9:p:2270-2292:d:20151
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/9/2270/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/4/9/2270/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anita Zvolinschi & Signe Kjelstrup & Olav Bolland & Hedzer J. van der Kooi, 2007. "Exergy Sustainability Indicators as a Tool in Industrial Ecology," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 11(4), pages 85-98, October.
    2. Enrico Sciubba, 2004. "From Engineering Economics to Extended Exergy Accounting: A Possible Path from Monetary to Resource‐Based Costing," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 8(4), pages 19-40, October.
    3. Marc A. Rosen & Hossam A. Kishawy, 2012. "Sustainable Manufacturing and Design: Concepts, Practices and Needs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-21, January.
    4. Lior, Noam, 2008. "Energy resources and use: The present situation and possible paths to the future," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 842-857.
    5. Penner, S.S., 2006. "Steps toward the hydrogen economy," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 33-43.
    6. Nirmal V. Gnanapragasam & Bale V. Reddy & Marc A. Rosen, 2010. "A Methodology for Assessing the Sustainability of Hydrogen Production from Solid Fuels," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(6), pages 1-20, May.
    7. Geoffrey P. Hammond, 2004. "Engineering Sustainability: Thermodynamics, Energy Systems and the Environment," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Adrian Winnett (ed.), Towards an Environment Research Agenda, chapter 8, pages 175-210, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Hennicke, Peter & Fischedick, Manfred, 2006. "Towards sustainable energy systems: The related role of hydrogen," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1260-1270, July.
    9. Frank S. Luisser & Marc A. Rosen, 2010. "Feasibility Analysis of Sustainability-Based Measures to Reduce VOC Emissions in Office Partition Manufacturing," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-21, February.
    10. Webler, Thomas & Tuler, Seth P., 2010. "Getting the engineering right is not always enough: Researching the human dimensions of the new energy technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 2690-2691, June.
    11. Aleksandras Vytautas Rutkauskas, 2012. "Using Sustainability Engineering to Gain Universal Sustainability Efficiency," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(6), pages 1-19, May.
    12. Doru A. Nicola & Marc A. Rosen & Cornelia A. Bulucea & Constantin Brandusa, 2010. "Some Sustainability Aspects of Energy Conversion in Urban Electric Trains," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 2(5), pages 1-19, May.
    13. Haberl, Helmut, 2006. "The global socioeconomic energetic metabolism as a sustainability problem," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 87-99.
    14. Global Energy Assessment Writing Team,, 2012. "Global Energy Assessment," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107005198, October.
    15. M.A. Rosen, 2002. "Energy efficiency and sustainable development," International Journal of Global Energy Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 17(1/2), pages 23-34.
    16. Global Energy Assessment Writing Team,, 2012. "Global Energy Assessment," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521182935, October.
    17. Rosen, Marc A. & Dincer, Ibrahim & Kanoglu, Mehmet, 2008. "Role of exergy in increasing efficiency and sustainability and reducing environmental impact," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 128-137, January.
    18. Marc A. Rosen, 2009. "Energy Sustainability: A Pragmatic Approach and Illustrations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 1(1), pages 1-26, March.
    19. Frank S. Luisser & Marc A. Rosen, 2009. "Improving the Sustainability of Office Partition Manufacturing: Balancing Options for Reducing Emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 1(2), pages 1-20, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simon Wong & John-Kun-Woon Yeung & Yui-Yip Lau & Joseph So, 2021. "Technical Sustainability of Cloud-Based Blockchain Integrated with Machine Learning for Supply Chain Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Lucio Di Matteo & Lorenzo Bulletti & Eliana Capecchi & Antonio La Viola & Davide Piccinino & Vincenzo Piscopo, 2020. "Perspectives of Using Lignin as Additive to Improve the Permeability of In-Situ Soils for Barrier Materials in Landfills," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-14, June.
    3. Alfonso Rodriguez-Dono & Antoni Hernández-Fernández, 2021. "Fostering Sustainability and Critical Thinking through Debate—A Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-24, June.
    4. Kristijan Breznik & Kris M. Y. Law & Jasmina Zeme, 2021. "Mission in Higher Education in Slovenia: Sustainability in Engineering versus Others Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-12, July.
    5. Maryati, Sri & Firman, Tommy & Humaira, An Nisaa Siti, 2022. "A sustainability assessment of decentralized water supply systems in Bandung City, Indonesia," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    6. Andrés César & Mauricio Pradena, 2020. "Sustainable Engineering: Load Transfer Characterization for the Structural Design of Thinner Concrete Pavements," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-19, November.
    7. Kai Ding & Pingyu Jiang & Mei Zheng, 2017. "Environmental and economic sustainability-aware resource service scheduling for industrial product service systems," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 28(6), pages 1303-1316, August.
    8. Daniel Akinyele & Juri Belikov & Yoash Levron, 2018. "Challenges of Microgrids in Remote Communities: A STEEP Model Application," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-35, February.
    9. Giancarlo Nota & Francesco David Nota & Domenico Peluso & Alonso Toro Lazo, 2020. "Energy Efficiency in Industry 4.0: The Case of Batch Production Processes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(16), pages 1-28, August.
    10. Vlado Popović & Milorad Kilibarda & Milan Andrejić & Borut Jereb & Dejan Dragan, 2021. "A New Sustainable Warehouse Management Approach for Workforce and Activities Scheduling," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    11. Lidia Alexa & Veronica Maier & Anca Șerban & Razvan Craciunescu, 2020. "Engineers Changing the World: Education for Sustainability in Romanian Technical Universities—An Empirical Web-Based Content Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-20, March.
    12. Marc A. Rosen, 2013. "Engineering and Sustainability: Attitudes and Actions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marc A. Rosen & Hossam A. Kishawy, 2012. "Sustainable Manufacturing and Design: Concepts, Practices and Needs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-21, January.
    2. Marc A. Rosen, 2013. "Engineering and Sustainability: Attitudes and Actions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-15, January.
    3. Al-Hamamre, Zayed & Saidan, Motasem & Hararah, Muhanned & Rawajfeh, Khaled & Alkhasawneh, Hussam E. & Al-Shannag, Mohammad, 2017. "Wastes and biomass materials as sustainable-renewable energy resources for Jordan," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 295-314.
    4. Elum, Z.A. & Momodu, A.S., 2017. "Climate change mitigation and renewable energy for sustainable development in Nigeria: A discourse approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 72-80.
    5. Anne-Maree Dowd & Michelle Rodriguez & Talia Jeanneret, 2015. "Social Science Insights for the BioCCS Industry," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-19, May.
    6. Fankhauser, Samuel & Jotzo, Frank, 2017. "Economic growth and development with low-carbon energy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86850, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Tilmann Rave, 2013. "Innovationsindikatoren zum globalen Klimaschutz – FuE-Ausgaben und Patente," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 66(15), pages 34-41, August.
    8. Daniel Moran & Richard Wood, 2014. "Convergence Between The Eora, Wiod, Exiobase, And Openeu'S Consumption-Based Carbon Accounts," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 245-261, September.
    9. Lykke E. Andersen & Luis Carlos Jemio, 2016. "Decentralization and poverty reduction in Bolivia: Challenges and opportunities," Development Research Working Paper Series 01/2016, Institute for Advanced Development Studies.
    10. Chen, Han & Huang, Ye & Shen, Huizhong & Chen, Yilin & Ru, Muye & Chen, Yuanchen & Lin, Nan & Su, Shu & Zhuo, Shaojie & Zhong, Qirui & Wang, Xilong & Liu, Junfeng & Li, Bengang & Tao, Shu, 2016. "Modeling temporal variations in global residential energy consumption and pollutant emissions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 820-829.
    11. Inglesi-Lotz, Roula, 2017. "Social rate of return to R&D on various energy technologies: Where should we invest more? A study of G7 countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 521-525.
    12. Tom Mikunda & Tom Kober & Heleen de Coninck & Morgan Bazilian & Hilke R�sler & Bob van der Zwaan, 2014. "Designing policy for deployment of CCS in industry," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 665-676, September.
    13. Li, Yating & Fei, Yinxin & Zhang, Xiao-Bing & Qin, Ping, 2019. "Household appliance ownership and income inequality: Evidence from micro data in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-1.
    14. Xiaolun Wang & Xinlin Yao, 2020. "Fueling Pro-Environmental Behaviors with Gamification Design: Identifying Key Elements in Ant Forest with the Kano Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-17, March.
    15. Florian Knobloch & Hector Pollitt & Unnada Chewpreecha & Vassilis Daioglou & Jean-Francois Mercure, 2017. "Simulating the deep decarbonisation of residential heating for limiting global warming to 1.5C," Papers 1710.11019, arXiv.org, revised May 2018.
    16. He, Gang & Victor, David G., 2017. "Experiences and lessons from China’s success in providing electricity for all," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 335-338.
    17. Jun Nakatani & Tamon Maruyama & Kosuke Fukuchi & Yuichi Moriguchi, 2015. "A Practical Approach to Screening Potential Environmental Hotspots of Different Impact Categories in Supply Chains," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(9), pages 1-15, August.
    18. van der Zwaan, Bob & Kober, Tom & Calderon, Silvia & Clarke, Leon & Daenzer, Katie & Kitous, Alban & Labriet, Maryse & Lucena, André F.P. & Octaviano, Claudia & Di Sbroiavacca, Nicolas, 2016. "Energy technology roll-out for climate change mitigation: A multi-model study for Latin America," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 526-542.
    19. Fichter, Tobias & Soria, Rafael & Szklo, Alexandre & Schaeffer, Roberto & Lucena, Andre F.P., 2017. "Assessing the potential role of concentrated solar power (CSP) for the northeast power system of Brazil using a detailed power system model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 695-715.
    20. Selosse, Sandrine & Ricci, Olivia & Maïzi, Nadia, 2013. "Fukushima's impact on the European power sector: The key role of CCS technologies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 305-312.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:4:y:2012:i:9:p:2270-2292:d:20151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.