38
details can be added on the social side, too, for example, by capturing direct relations between production activities and society, such as labor requirements at different levels of skill or labor conditions (Simas et al. 2014 ).
IAMs that fully respect IE principles will generate scenarios that include a wide
spectrum of transformation strategies, provide a mass balance consistent and
material- specifi c representation of SEM, and comprehensively cover interactions of
SEM with the environment and society. These comprehensive and scientifi cally
credible scenarios of society’s future metabolism will then form a common basis for
the analysis by different scientifi c disciplines.
5 Conclusion
Prospective IE models combine central features of the established IE methods into
a new framework. They allow researchers to conduct comprehensive and dynamic
scenario analyses of society’s future metabolism and to study the potential systemwide effect of sustainable development strategies. The development of these models
is motivated by the desire to study the coming socio-metabolic transition and to
assess the different transformation strategies at full scale and with long-term scope,
while maintaining the high level of detail and biophysical consistency that is a distinctive feature of industrial ecology methods. The intellectual framing that comes
along with the prospective IE models provides a “new slang” for the fi eld: It broadens the perspective of industrial ecology research because it gives impulses for the
development of new and important research questions for further refi nement and
integration of assessment methods and for the development of a common, modelindependent database of socioeconomic metabolism.
The recent development in industrial ecology methods necessitates a discussion
about the relation between prospective IE models and IAMs since the latter are the
major tool for prospective assessment of transformation strategies. We contributed
to this debate by proposing how industrial ecology principles could become an integral part of integrated assessment models and how this integration could strengthen
both fi elds and increase the relevance, robustness, and credibility of scientifi c
assessment of transformation strategies.
Stefan Pauliuk is a postdoctoral researcher, and Edgar G Hertwich is a professor at the Industrial Ecology Programme and the Department of Energy and Process
Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU),
Trondheim, Norway.
Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the work of Daniel B Müller, who is the principal
investigator in the development of extended dynamic MFA and who commented on an early draft
of this chapter. Guillaume Majeau-Bettez pointed out the necessity for the overview presented
here. The contribution of Stefan Pauliuk was funded by the Research Council of Norway under the
CENSES Project (Grant number 209697). The funding source was not involved in this work.
S. Pauliuk and E.G. Hertwich
details can be added on the social side, too, for example, by capturing direct relations between production activities and society, such as labor requirements at different levels of skill or labor conditions (Simas et al. 2014 ).
IAMs that fully respect IE principles will generate scenarios that include a wide
spectrum of transformation strategies, provide a mass balance consistent and
material- specifi c representation of SEM, and comprehensively cover interactions of
SEM with the environment and society. These comprehensive and scientifi cally
credible scenarios of society’s future metabolism will then form a common basis for
the analysis by different scientifi c disciplines.
5 Conclusion
Prospective IE models combine central features of the established IE methods into
a new framework. They allow researchers to conduct comprehensive and dynamic
scenario analyses of society’s future metabolism and to study the potential systemwide effect of sustainable development strategies. The development of these models
is motivated by the desire to study the coming socio-metabolic transition and to
assess the different transformation strategies at full scale and with long-term scope,
while maintaining the high level of detail and biophysical consistency that is a distinctive feature of industrial ecology methods. The intellectual framing that comes
along with the prospective IE models provides a “new slang” for the fi eld: It broadens the perspective of industrial ecology research because it gives impulses for the
development of new and important research questions for further refi nement and
integration of assessment methods and for the development of a common, modelindependent database of socioeconomic metabolism.
The recent development in industrial ecology methods necessitates a discussion
about the relation between prospective IE models and IAMs since the latter are the
major tool for prospective assessment of transformation strategies. We contributed
to this debate by proposing how industrial ecology principles could become an integral part of integrated assessment models and how this integration could strengthen
both fi elds and increase the relevance, robustness, and credibility of scientifi c
assessment of transformation strategies.
Stefan Pauliuk is a postdoctoral researcher, and Edgar G Hertwich is a professor at the Industrial Ecology Programme and the Department of Energy and Process
Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU),
Trondheim, Norway.
Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the work of Daniel B Müller, who is the principal
investigator in the development of extended dynamic MFA and who commented on an early draft
of this chapter. Guillaume Majeau-Bettez pointed out the necessity for the overview presented
here. The contribution of Stefan Pauliuk was funded by the Research Council of Norway under the
CENSES Project (Grant number 209697). The funding source was not involved in this work.
S. Pauliuk and E.G. Hertwich