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New frontiers for sustainability: emergy evaluation of an eco-village

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Abstract

The emergy analysis was used to evaluate the sustainability of a village which aims to be ecologically friendly. The choice of focusing on the use of local resources including agriculture and farm goods, photovoltaic panels, renewable heating and cooling systems, recycled water from constructed wetlands etc., aims to obtain a sustainable village. Indices and ratios based on emergy flows have been calculated and used to evaluate the behaviour of the whole system. Their dependence upon the fraction of renewable and non renewable inputs as well as locally available versus purchased inputs from outside is stressed. A new index of sustainability (SI) is also applied to the case study.

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Correspondence to Angela D. La Rosa.

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Readers should send their comments on this paper to BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.

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Siracusa, G., La Rosa, A.D., Palma, P. et al. New frontiers for sustainability: emergy evaluation of an eco-village. Environ Dev Sustain 10, 845–855 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-007-9087-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-007-9087-2

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