Editor’s choice
Project / This project provides cities with an adjustable framework to assess their level and potential for circularity.
Funded by Horizon Europe, C-sink will establish the foundations upon which to build a standardized and transparent European Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market with trustworthy accounting methodologies and policy strategies. Comprehensive scientific assessments will be made of the various CDR approaches, in terms of (a) their potential uptake of CO2 (or particulate carbon in the case of biochar), and (b) their safety and other impacts over time. C-SINK will assess (a) the viability (technological, legal, political, social, economic and environmental) of a range of emerging and existing nature-based and engineered CDR methods, and their synergies in different combinations, for increasing the scale of CDR and its long-term storage, as well as (b) what needs to be done to enable and ensure their rapid and large-scale, effective and unbiased deployment, including recommendations for policy and MRV development.
In this project, SEI is leading the work package on Social, Environmental and total economic value assessment of the different CDR technologies. In particular, SEI will lead on the methodological design of the integrated assessment, and then focus on the social impact and acceptability of these technologies in a series of case study locations. This entails designing a survey to understand the positive and negative, intended and unintended consequences of these technologies on people, and undertaking qualitative research to tease out nuances in social acceptability across the case studies. SEI will also lead on the deliverable that combines the findings from the social impact study, the environmental study, and the economic and technical study. Using multi-criteria decision-making analysis, the different CDR technologies will be compared from a social, economic and environmental standpoint. It entails the modelling of simplified comparable scenarios for different approaches of CDR for selected use cases from C-SINK pilot use-cases (at least three use cases) as well as for a generalised case as a framework (in order to allow its implementation also for future cases). The scenarios take into account specific characteristics of a site, social impact analysis, environmental analysis together with ecosystem services analysis and techno-economic analysis, taking into account also timing criteria (i.e., different outcomes depending on time). The alternative scenarios will show benefits and potential negative aspects of each choice. The modelling result supports and would illustrate decisions and choice between CDR solutions or suggest their combination.
Journal article / This paper presents the findings from a social impact assessment conducted in the city of Umeå, Sweden.
Journal article / This study examines the potential of the EU Circular Economy Monitoring Framework as a monitoring tool for urban areas.
SEI brief / A growing majority of the world's population lives in cities. That's why they're an ideal testing ground for circular economy policies, SEI researchers say.
Journal article / More cities are embarking on transitions to circular economies as a solution to climate change. Social impacts must be considered for effective transformations.
Journal article / An evidence map describes the literature published in the past decade on cities' circular economy strategies and focus.
Journal article / The authors present 15 indicator-based frameworks to measure circularity at the city level to fill a gap in mapping and assessing circular economy transitions.
Project / This project provides cities with an adjustable framework to assess their level and potential for circularity.
Project / Stockholm Sustainable Finance Centre (SSFC) aimed to have a transformative impact on sustainable finance in Sweden and beyond.
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