ABSTRACT
Environmental sustainability focuses on emissions and impacts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants and on enhancing or optimizing energy, resource and water usage, waste management, and utilization of renewable fuels and feedstocks. A framework for sustainable engineering requires a strong focus on the environment dimension of sustainable development, including preservation of biodiversity and respect for all life forms regardless of how useful they are to humankind, and staying within the ecosystem’s carrying capacity in terms of resource development and waste assimilation. More generally, environmental sustainability includes socio-ecological areas, like preserving access to ecosystems services essential to health and wellbeing, and eco-economic areas such as developing closed cycles of operation and consumption to minimize waste.
This chapter covers environmental sustainability and its context, natural earth cycles and greenhouse gases, including carbon tracking. The ecological footprint is covered in depth, through such topics as climate change, environmental burden, global warming potential, acidification, ozone formation and destruction, smog formation, human health, toxicity, eutrophication, habitat destruction, resource depletion and particulate matter. To close, coverage is provided of carbon topics like carbon capture, decarbonization and carbon utilization, as well as the environmental cost of carbon emissions and environmental impact assessments.
