Speaker
Description
The COVID-19 pandemic, which swept over most countries worldwide, brought considerable challenges to many areas of human activities. Besides the crucial challenges – medical services and treatments, they have also been societal, political and economic issues to be dealt with.
Even under this critical situation, when the priorities considerably shifted in the fight for the survival of the population, the environmental impact should not be neglected. As many studies and advanced research developments have been demonstrating, the pandemic can be used as an inhibitor for a positive change and if properly managed as an innovation accelerator that triggered the six innovation wave.
However, the impact on the environment has varied in different parts of the world based on specific conditions. This contribution has been overviewing three parts of the world: The European Union, which despite its variety of presently 27 countries act legally and politically as one unit; the Russian Federation and a sample of a highly developed city-state in South East Asia – Singapore.
Based on the previous research results (see the list of references), environmental footprints based on integrated environmental methods, including Life Cycle Assessment are exploited for the quantification. They include waste, especially plastic waste needed for fighting the COVID-19, disinfection requirements, profound impact of the logistic and the rise of new, technologically advanced, human activities, mainly related to the e- prefix.
The conclusions are stemming from summarising the experience gathered in different countries and provided some assessment for the final, hopefully, phase of the battle with the virus and the starting points for the recovery, which should use the “creative destruction" opportunity to boost the innovation wave.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the EU project “Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL”, project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456 funded by EU “CZ Operational Programme Research, Development and Education”, Priority 1: Strengthening capacity for quality research has been acknowledged and by Tomsk Polytechnic University Competitiveness Enhancement Program grant Number VIU-RSCABS-199/2020, executed via the collaboration contract No.9627 with the Tomsk Polytechnic University from 17/09/2020.
References
Klemeš, J.J., Fan, Y.V., Tan R. Jiang, P., 2020. Minimising the present and future plastic waste, energy and environmental footprints related to COVID-19, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 127, 2020, 109883.
Fan Y.V., Jiang P., Hemzal M., Klemeš J.J., 2021. An update of COVID-19 influence on waste management. Science of The Total Environment, 754, 142014.
Klemeš, J.J., Van Fan, Y., Jiang, P., 2020. The energy and environmental footprints of COVID-19 fighting measures–PPE, disinfection, supply chains. Energy, 118701
Klemeš, J.J., Van Fan, Y., Jiang, P., 2020. COVID‐19 pandemic facilitating energy transition opportunities, International Journal of Energy Research, DOI: 10.1002/er.6007
Jiang P., Fu X., Fan Y.V., Klemeš J.J., Chen P., Ma S., Zhang W., 2021. Spatial-temporal potential exposure risk analytics and urban sustainability impacts related to COVID-19 mitigation: A perspective from car mobility behaviour, Journal of Cleaner Production, 279, 123673.
Jiang P., Fu X., Fan Y.V., Klemeš J.J., 2021, Impacts of COVID-19 on energy demand and consumption: Challenges, lessons and emerging opportunities, Applied Energy. Doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.116441
Chofreh A.G., Feybi A.G., Klemeš J.J., Moosav S.M.I, Davoudi M., Zeinalnezhad M., 2020, Covid-19 shock: Development of strategic management framework for global energy, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 110643, doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2020.110643.
| Affiliation of speaker | Head of Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory (SPIL) NETME CENTRE, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Brno University of Technology - VUT Brno Technická 2896/2, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic |
|---|---|
| Publication | Without publication of the article |
| Position of speaker | Professor, Head of SPIL |
