Material-Energy Flows for a Sustainable Society
PA 5752
Fall 2015
University of Minnesota
Room: Blegen 330
Time: Th 6:00 – 8:45 PM
Syllabus
Instructor:
Anu Ramaswami
Contact:
HHH 154; 303-523-8130; anu@umn.edu
Office Hours: Thu 3.00 to 5.00 pm or by appointment
Course Description
How do material and energy flows shape the development of a sustainable society? Flows of
energy fuels like coal and petroleum, bulk materials like sand, recyclable metals like copper and
renewable resources like fish and timber - are the topic of this class. Such material-energy flows
are important in supporting human development and well-being, but they are also often poorly
managed, highly-polluting, and in some cases, finite and non-renewable, placing immense stress
on our planet and its web of life.
We will discuss materials and energy flows in the context of: a) Economic and human
development; b) Resource scarcity, renewability and recyclability, and, c) As a source of
environmental pollution, with more than 4 million deaths globally attributable to fuel
combustion.
The central questions addressed in this class are:
 How much and what types of material and energy resources support health, wealth
and well-being in different parts of the world?
 How do different units of society - consumers, producers, infrastructure providers,
and governments (ranging from cities to nations) – make decisions that shape
society’s material and energy flows?
 What actions and policies could support more sustainable use of energy and resources
by these different units?
Students will use an inter-disciplinary approach, integrating core topics from environmental
economics, industrial ecology (resource sustainability assessments) and human health risk
assessment, in the context of public policy.
The course will be offered to graduate students and honors students (seniors and junior standing)
from across the University. Active learning will be promoted through a hands-on case study with
real-world data analysis pertaining to resource use, environmental footprint-ing, health impacts,
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and cost-benefit analysis, coupled with literature review to understand the various leverage
points for action toward sustainable development by the following different actors:
1.
Producers – specific businesses or industries in the Twin Cities area
2.
Infrastructure sectors – energy supply, water supply
3.
Consumers – households
4.
Governments at the metropolitan/city scales
In addition, graduate students will complete two term papers for graduate credit – one on
synthesis across the 4 disciplines; the other on identifying key knowledge gaps in the
sustainability science, and priorities to inform action.
Learning Objectives
Students are expected to:
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•
•
•
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Understand the types of natural resources used by society, and key resource constraints
that are important in addressing issues of sustainable development. For example,
students will learn about renewable, non-renewable, and recyclable resources, and the
impacts of their flows in society.
Learn key concepts and analytic tools from environmental economics, and understand
an economists’ views and assumptions about nature and society. The outline articulates
specific concepts, methods and analytic tools drawn from environmental economics, such
as analysis of supply-demand curves, externalities, cost-benefit analysis, financial
analysis, and interpretation of economic input-output tables.
Learn key concepts and analytic tools of industrial ecology, and understand the
industrial ecologists’ views and assumptions about nature and society. The outline
articulates specific concepts, methods and analytic tools drawn from industrial ecology,
such as material-energy flow analysis (MEFA), life cycle assessment (LCA) and
environmental footprinting (MFA-LCA) for sustainability assessments.
Learn tools for health risk assessment and indices of social vulnerability – to estimate
individual and population level health risk from exposure to various hazards. Students
will review the results of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study understanding
health outcomes pertaining to various risk factors in different nations, as well as track the
Human Development Index.
Bring these concepts together to inform decision-making by different units of society,
and understand how people and their values, beliefs and agendas, shape potential future
actions toward sustainability. Students will learn about stakeholder analysis, and theories
of change for various actor groups. The course will address ethics (distributional and
procedural), and offer comparative global perspectives on material-energy flows and
well-being in different world nations.
The course is oriented toward graduate students and, juniors and seniors from the Honors
program. Graduate students will complete two term papers to receive graduate credit: (1) Discuss
the strengths, limitations, assumptions, and vantage points of environmental economics,
industrial ecology, environmental health and public policy. (2) Identify key knowledge gaps and
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policy priorities to achieve action toward sustainable development, considering the different
actors.
Grading
30% for two quizzes (15% each) interspersed in the weeks; 30% for weekly homework (first 8
weeks) and group work; and 40% for a hands-on project (either in group or individually, TBD)
Hands-On Project
The hands-on project will use real-world data and case study situations to provide experience in:
(A) Computing the energy and Greenhouse Gas footprints of different units of society; (B)
Conduct a cost-benefit analysis of select actions to reduce GHG emissions, including co-benefits
to health or other aspects of well-being. Identify areas of uncertainty. (C) Identify key
actors/stakeholders and review the literature about their positions and agenda with respect to
various proposed actions. These projects will provide active learning experiences and integrate
the various sections of the course. Groups of students will organize around three units of society:



A single industry or production sector (e.g., a primary industry like oil refining or cement
production, and a secondary industry like a school or hospital)
Various infrastructure sectors – such as water supply, transportation, etc.
Household - in the context of designing multi-level interventions.
Text Book(s)
The primary text book will be:
Environmental and Natural Resources Economics: Theory, Policy, and the Sustainable
Society, Steven C. Hackett, January 1, 2011, M.E. Sharpe, Publisher.
You can purchase the eBook at:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=c020CYCr3bkC
This text book will be supplemented with a variety of papers and on-line resources. Select
resources are noted below:
Weekly Topics & Learning Objective
Week
Learning objective – key concepts or skills
Resources
1Sep 10
A. Understanding types of resource flows: Renewable, Non-renewable,
recyclable, by use-phase, by pollution impacts, by governance. Developing a
mental model of material-energy flows and their impact (positive and
negative) on society
Fukuda-Parr,
2003
B. What is human development? Introduction to Sen’s Human Capabilities
approach, comparison with basic needs and utility theory. Origins, use and
limitations of the Human Development Index (HDI). Distributional ethics.
C. What are material-energy requirements for a good life? Cross-country
assessment of primary energy use and HDI across nations. The Goldemberg
corner; implications for sustainable development. Ideas of sufficiency and
decoupling.
3
Two readings
about HDI &HPI
Steinberger et
al., 2012
(Read Chapter
1-textbook as
general
background for
Week 3)
2
Sep 17
A. Material-Energy accounts of nations. Overview of the basic structure of
economic input-output tables of a nation or region. Role of resource inputs to
the economy- imports, exports, inter-industry flows, final demand and final
consumption. Resource inputs, economic activity and wages/employment.
B. Intro to western economic thinkers and cross-cultural views on
sustainable development
www.eio-lca.net
(Read Chapter 2
textbook as
background for
Week 3)
C. Values and economics
3.Sep 24
A. What is a society’s optimal levels of production? The construct of
Supply-Demand curves. The equi-marginal principle, market equilibrium,
Pareto optimal and Kaldor Hick’s criterion
Chapter 3-4
B. Market Failure: Cartels & monopolies; externalities – pollution and
depletion of ecosystem services. Pigouvian taxes, common pool resources
and the tragedy of the commons.
4. Oct 01
A. Governing Non-Renewable/Finite & Polluting Resource: Fossil Fuel case
study: Allocating a finite resource, discount rates, Hotelling Rule
Chapter 5-6
B. Debates around Resource Limits to Growth: Hotelling Rule, Club of
Rome – Meadows, empirical observations, future outlook with resource
nexus issues- water-energy nexus.
5. Oct 08
A. Governing the Commons: Managing renewable common pool
resources. Defining the maximum sustainable yield, complexity of
estimating sustainable harvest rates.
Chapter 5-6
Dietz et al., 2003
B. Cooperation and Ostrom’s design principles for governing common pool
resources. Application to a case study on fisheries management and/or case
study of rice farming in Bali.
6. Oct 15
A. Governing Non-Renewable/Finite & Polluting Resource: Fossil Fuel case
study: Air Pollution, health impacts and results from the Global Burden of
Disease study
Global burden of
disease study:
Lim et al., 2014
B. Methods for Individual and population health risk assessments with
exposure to hazards, and social vulnerability. Case study of population
health risk assessments.
Social
Vulnerability:
CEC, 2012.
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7. Oct 22
A. Basic principles of cost-benefit analysis and financial analysis:
Chapter 7
B. Methods for estimating costs and benefits in practice: Valuing nature. The
value of a statistical life. Valuing Well-being. Case studies and worked
examples from text.
8. Oct 29
A. Methods for estimating benefits: Contingent Valuation and hedonic
pricing. Case studies and worked examples from the text
Chapter 7
B. Cost-benefit analysis of the US EPA’s Clear Air Act
9. Nov
05
A. Tracing fossil fuels through the US Economy – using the IO Table:
Introducing the Leontief matrix. Direct and indirect energy requirements of
production and consumption.
www.eio-lca.net
B. Approaches for conducting life cycle assessment (LCA)
10. Nov
12
A. Assigning responsibility for the impacts of material-energy flows to
Producers and Consumers
B. Combining material-energy flows with life cycle assessment: MFALCA: A generalizable method for developing environmental footprints for
different units of society - producers, consumers, infrastructure, and cities.
11. Nov
19
A. Measuring the “greenness” of a product, business or infrastructure sector:
Production based footprints. Principles of green engineering and industrial
ecology for sustainable production. Do green “principles” yield good
indicators/indices of “greenness”? Case study of green building
performance.
WRI, 2011
Chavez &
Ramaswami,
2013
Zimmerman et
al., 2009
Prakash and
Potoski
B. Factors that motivate or inhibit sustainability actions by businesses –
Theory of the Firm and analysis of early adoption of the Energy Star
program. Club theory and voluntary environmental programs. Explicit and
implicit financial and cost-benefit analyses; split incentives in large
organizations.
12. Nov
26
(TBD)
A. Measuring the “greenness” of the consumer – Calculate personal carbon
footprint for consumption
Jones &
Kammen, 2011
B. Factors that motivate or inhibit sustainability actions by households–
theories of change on adopting environment-friendly behaviors. Guest
lecture on behavioral economics.
13. Dec
03
A. Measuring the Green-ness of our cities– Challenges in measuring the
environmental impact of cities – need for multiple footprints, complexity of
metrics for equity and environmental performance
B. Policy and action levers for cities – taxes, incentives, subsidies, building
codes and regulations. Cost benefit analyses, financial analysis, first-cost
barriers, innovations in financing mechanisms.
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Chavez &
Ramaswami,
2013
14.Dec10
A. Research Frontiers – multi-dimensional environmental resource use,
pollution and health footprints of cities. Do co-benefits matter in decisionmaking?
Additional
readings
B. Distributional and procedural ethics. Which and whose co-benefits and
costs drive policies? Citizen priorities, politics and political economy.
15. Dec
17
Group project presentations
ALL
Select Additional Readings & Online Resources:
Annenberg, et al. (2010). An estimate of the global burden of anthropogenic ozone and
fine particulate matter on the premature human morality using atmospheric
modeling. Environmental Health Perspectives.
Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2012). Commodity-Industry Use Table 2012
www.bea.gov/industry/io_annual.htm.
Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2012). Industry-Commodity Make Table for
2012. www.bea.gov/industry/io_annual.htm.
Chavez and Ramaswami. (2013). Articulating An Infrastructure Supply-Chain
Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Footprint for Cities: Mathematical Relationships and
Policy Relevance. Energy Policy.
Dietz et al. (2003). The Struggle to Govern The Commons. Science.
CEC (California Energy Commission). Social Vulnerability to Climate Change in
California, 2012, Website; http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012013/CEC-500-2012-013.pdf
Fukuda-Parr. (2003). The Human Development Paradigm: Operationalizing Sen’s Ideas
on Capabilities. Feminist Economics.
Jones, C. M.; Kammen, D. M. Quantifying carbon footprint reduction opportunities for
US households and communities. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011 45(9), 4088-4095; DOI:
10.1021/es102221h.
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Lim, S. S.; Vos, T.; Flaxman, A. D.; Danaei, G.; Shibuya, K.; Adair-Rohani, H., et al. A
comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors
and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: A systematic analysis for the global
burden of disease study 2010. The Lancet, 2013 380(9859), 2224-2260; DOI:
10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61766-8.
Steinberger, et. al. (2012). Pathways of human development and carbon emissions
embodied in trade. Nature Climate Change.
World Resources Institute. Corporate GHG Reporting Protocol.
http://www.wri.org/publication/greenhouse-gas-protocol
Instructor Biography
Anu Ramaswami is the Charles M. Denny, Jr., Chair of Science, Technology, and Public Policy
at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a professor bioproducts and biosystems
engineering in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Sciences at the University of
Minnesota. Ramaswami is among the leading scholars on sustainable urban infrastructure and
has seen her work adopted as policies and protocols for developing sustainable cities in the
United States and internationally. Ramaswami’s research spans environmental modeling,
environmental technologies, industrial ecology, sustainable infrastructure design, urban systems
analysis, and integration of science and technology with policy and planning for real-world
implementation in communities. She has developed novel interdisciplinary education programs
and resources in these diverse areas. She is the lead author of a graduate-level textbook on
integrated environmental modeling. She will lead the course overall, and facilitate interdisciplinary linkages in education building upon work in prior NSF IGERT & PIRE projects. She
has taught a graduate version of this course as a Special Topics class at the Humphrey School,
which is now being modified to be a blended graduate-undergraduate class with interdisciplinary
instruction from the three-four instructors noted here.
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