Food, Energy, Water Systems Nexus

Overview

While energy supply is a key problem in the future, special attention has to be paid to the nexus with water and food systems as well as other environmental issues including nitrogen emissions, land use, pesticide use, and biodiversity loss. Research in this field addresses a wide range of topics such as options to produce renewable energy on farms; carbon, water and land footprints of changing diets; impacts of global food trade on natural resource use; and water use in energy supply systems. To address these questions, we apply a wide-range of methods such as process analysis, input-output analysis, and substance flow analysis.

Theme contact person

Dr. ir. S. (Sanderine) Nonhebel

Projects related to this theme

Environmental pressure of consumption patterns

The project is about the environmental load of Dutch household consumption and is financed by the Ministry of Infrastructure and water management. The goals is to develop a tool with which the energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and several other emissions as well as land use of households are determined. Besides this the tool should be able to give a good indication of the material use present in the consumption items. The tool must be able to determine the total environmental pressure of households but also be able to perform on a detail level: comparing different products with the same function.

Contact person: Dr. R.M.J. (René) Benders

Environmental impact circular options for food and packaging

The project is about the analysis of the environmental impact of the food supply and consumption chain and is financed bij PBL. The results will be used to give recommendations for circular options for consumers. The project is restricted to those recommendations in which the consumers can play a role. This project is part of a larger project where also clothing and furniture supply and use chains are analysed. For all sub-projects the recently updated EAP tool is used, see the "Environmental pressure of consumption patterns" project description.

Contact person: Dr. R.M.J. (René) Benders

PhD projects

• Adaptive logistics in circular economy | Dieu Linh Hoang.
• Analysis of the implementation and implications of the introduction of state-of-the-art sustainability criteria for biobased products | Nidia Ramirez Contreras.

• Energy input and carbon footprint to supply water for major crops in Pakistan | Abdul Wahab Siyal.

• Evaluating global food systems sustainability from a perspective of agricultural trade | Junjie Yi.

• Modelling and analysing the Colombian energy system to obtain short, medium and longer term scenario’s for Bio-based Economy for the national energy demand, supply mix and GHG mitigation potential | Ahmed Younis.
• Sustainable development potentials and pathways for biobased economy options in Brazil | Tjerk Lap.

• To construct a bio-based evaluation system: The sustainability influence of the biomass development and utilization in Loess Plateau | Yanmei Liu.
• Quality induced water scarcity and its reginal inequality in China | Dan Wang.

Previous projects

ADAPNER

The central objective of ADAPNER is to explore the logistics challenges and opportunities associated with a Circular Economy and inform the partners to develop and transform their business. ADAPNER will contribute to new tools for the analysis of chain processes (first sub-theme), by developing in RL1 a framework that allows us to conceptually and formally describe evolving network environments with adaptable logistics. [link to project website]
This booklet describes the context and the end results of the ADAPNER project.

Contact person: Dr. ir. S. (Sanderine) Nonhebel

PhD projects

• Estimation of bioenergy potential in China | Bingquan Zhang.