Even if aviation industry has considerably reduced its fuel consumption in relation to goods and passengers carried, however, the remarkable, and almost constant, increment of flights has caused a substantial increase of chemical pollutants. In particular, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, from aviation, currently account for approximately 3.5% of the total emissions from developed countries. The most significant impacts are due to emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other substances that, even in small amounts (water vapour, CH4, N2O, particulates, etc.), due to their high Radiative Forcing (RF), are able to vary, from about 2 to 4 times greater than those of CO2 alone (according to an IPCC report), the physical parameters (temperature, albedo, humidity, etc.) and chemical composition of the atmosphere, changing at the same time, many natural phenomena like the intensity, the rate and the same type of precipitations. Several guidelines and norms for the adoption and implementation of a global scheme of regulations are currently being suggested by numerous subjects, although the prospects of a comprehensive inter-governmental agreement on the adoption of these schemes are uncertain. European Commission has resolved incorporating aviation in the Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). This new Directive has become effective from the 1st January 2012, but certain airlines have already threatened to boycott it, while others have suggested that they will transfer the costs to their passengers. The increase in costs for airlines could lead to a competitive disadvantage for European airlines and to a substantial environmental inefficiency of this normative measure.

The chapter describes the ecological footprint, the principle and the methodolgy for calculating it.

Fino a pochi decenni fa, il settore aeronautico presentava un trascurabile impatto sull'ambiente del Pianeta e sul relativo sistema climatico nel suo complesso. Recentemente, però, il notevole intensificarsi del traffico aereo - nonostante le brevi battute di arresto a seguito dell'11 settembre 2001, della guerra in Iraq e del verificarsi della SARS -, dovuto a una serie di ragioni, prima tra tutte, al boom dei voli low-cost, sta mutando radicalmente e in modo molto repentino la situazione. Dal punto di vista ambientale, però, profonde incognite aleggiano sul prossimo futuro, se l'attuale trend di sviluppo del settore dovesse, come sembra, permanere. Nonostante gli indiscutibili progressi tecnologici, infatti, tale tipo di mobilità non si sta sviluppando in termini di eco-sostenibilità. Molto ci si attende dall'entrata a regime, nel 2012, in Europa del sistema di "Emission trading", anche se non mancano già le prime perplessità. In questa nota, esamineremo i principali problemi ambientali connessi alle emissioni chimiche (inquinanti e contaminanti) di questo settore e le principali soluzioni proposte.

Even if electrical energy storage technologies have been used since the end of the 19th century, a new interest has grown recently, due to the necessity of adapting the electrical system to the new paradigm. The massive increase in the use of renewable and distributed sources of energy, coupled with the emerging requests for lower power costs and higher reliability to the system, calls for new ways of producing and distributing energy. All developed countries are busy, at the moment, to win the run for the implementation of a smart grid, i.e. a new generation grid able to deal with intermittent electricity production (for example solar, wind), decentralised small-scale sources, multidirectional electricity flows, remote control and real time management. Storage devices represent the balancing element which allows responding in an economic way either to the demand or to the offer side. This paper presents a review of the electrical storage technologies, showing benefits and critical aspect of energy storage, in respect of the new need of the energy sector to become smart.

Shipping around the world is fast growing.This corresponds to an increase of pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. The best strategy seems to be the increase in ship efficiency. In addition to technical instruments, behavioural changes may have a positive impact. IMO has developed some important tools to monitor the efficiency and fuel consumption of vessels.

Land snails are recognized as healthy food due to their low fat content and presence of those nutrients required for a well-balanced diet. However, no studies have been published on the nutritional and antioxidant properties of land snail eggs. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the phenomenon connected with the lack of specific legislation that regulates the production and trade, as well as of an European quality certification that identifies the product. In addition, snails are also considered as one of the worst causes of food allergy.

Il lavoro analizza le opportunità e le criticità offerte dalle tecnologie smart per rendere più intelligente e sostenibile il sitema elettrico.

In the current note, authors critically investigate the nutritional, ecological and economic issues connected with the consumption of insects as important and highly sustainable food resources, their factory farming and commercial maturity, highlighting that there is still, in this regard, the necessity to conduct further and more in-depth scientific research and to develop appropriate technologies for industrial processing, in order to make fully available these foods to the final consumers.

The book describes the tools based on life cycle approach and possible application of them to regional development in a more sustainable way. The book is full of case studies from all over the world.

Logistics infrastructures play an important role in many fields of economic activity, substantially influencing land use planning. Despite this, scholars and practitioners have dedicated little attention to setting up efficient indicators able to define the effect that infrastructure investments have on industrial activities. Many theoretical and empirical studies have been dedicated to calculating the exact numerical effect of infrastructure investment on social wellbeing, but their explicative capacity has always proved to be scarce since it is difficult work and with high levels of arbitrariness. This work becomes much more difficult when it aims to determine the effects on industrial efficiency. In this paper, we will use an indicator to overcome the problems related to determination of the exact economic impact of infrastructure investment on an economic region or local territory and suggest land use policy models to analyse infrastructure economic impacts. More specifically, we will focus our attention on the factors affecting logistics and economic performance within the economic regions around twenty major European ports. By using the new ACIT (Autoregulation, Compensation, Invariance and Transversality) indicator, we show that positive effects, deriving from port logistics interventions, can occur in those regions that have an ACIT indicator positively associated with other variables, such as propensity to innovation and level of education. This indicator represents a starting point to study how, in the better performing regions, it could be possible to develop logistics services able to stimulate a higher level of transport demand and, at the same time, respect high standards in environmental quality. Finally, we explain how an improvement in logistics performances of a port region may determine an improvement in its socioeconomic and environmental conditions.

In this paper, we have explored the possibility of substituting traditional meat products with an alternative source of protein (insects) in order to reduce human pressure on water. Insects, in fact, could represent a good alternative source of quality proteins and nutrients and they are already a very popular component of the diet of one third of the world's population in approximately 80% of countries. In the study, we have taken into account only two species of edible insects (Tenebrio molitor and Zophobas morio mealworms), because they are already commercially produced even in Western countries, and for this reason it is possible to find specific data in literature about their diets. We have used the water footprint (WF) as a reliable indicator to calculate the volume of water required for production and to compare different products. The final aim of the work is, in fact, to evaluate the WF of the production of edible insects with a focus on water consumption associated with protein content, in order to make a comparison with other animal protein sources. We have demonstrated that, from a freshwater resource perspective, it is more efficient to obtain protein through mealworms rather than other traditional farmed animals.

analysis of natural resources use efficiency, methods for assessing it.

Supply of some critical raw materials by European industry is becoming more and more difficult. After the case of natural textile fibres, in particular cotton, and timber, over the last few years the problem of rare earths (REs) availability has also risen. The 97% of the global supply of rare earth metals (REMs) is produced by China, that has recently done copious cuts of its exports, apparently in order to protect its environment. This fact has greatly increased the REs prices, causing tension and uncertainty among the world hi-tech markets. Many of these materials, in fact, have very few effective substitutes and low recycling rates too. In addition, their natural reserves of rare earths are concentrated in a small number of countries (China, Brazil, US, Russia, Democratic Republic of Congo). REMs are a group of 17 elements particularly used in many new electronic and advanced components: such as fuel cells, mobile phones, displays, hi-capacity batteries, permanent magnets for wind power generation, green energy devices, etc. Many analysts foresee much more requests in the next decades.

Marine goods transfer provides an efficient form of long-distance large-volume transport. However, despite technical advances and lowered emissions per kilometers and ton transported, its environmental impact continues to be a significant source of contaminants and contributes significantly to the degradation of the natural environment. Over recent years, in fact, a variety of different types of marine pollution from vessels has drawn more and more public attention. This has been recognized as a growing problem by both policymakers, jurists and scientists and has resulted in an increasing number of rules and regulations being established by international, national and local legislators

the chapter describes the dynamic of regional development and try to apply the holistic approach based on lyfe cycle to it.