Sustainability at the water source

A new study commissioned by the EEA shows a clear hierarchy of passenger and freight transport modes, in terms of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Rail and waterborne transport have the lowest emissions per kilometre and unit transported, while aviation and road transport emit significantly more. Alongside shifting to rail and waterborne transport, improving the GHG efficiency of all motorised forms of transport remains an important objective. Moreover, monitoring their GHG efficiency on a regular basis would support these efforts. While active modes, such as walking and cycling, are outside the scope of the study, they are an obvious choice for clean and sustainable mobility because their emissions can be assumed to be close to zero.

This paper integrates ethics into decision-making for sustainable development to help planners choose between decommissioning and reuse of an offshore gas platform within a social perspective. To do so, I match multi-criteria analysis (MCA), cost–benefit analysis (CBA), weighted life-cycle assessment (WLCA), and monetary life-cycle assessment (MLCA) to four main ethical standpoints…