Future Directions
The ecosystem metaphor popularized by Frosch and Gallopoulos has been a valuable creative tool for helping researchers look for novel solutions to difficult problems. Recently, it has been pointed out that this metaphor is based largely on a model of classical ecology, and that advancements in understanding ecology based on complexity science have been made by researchers such as C. S. Holling, James J. Kay, and others. For industrial ecology, this may mean a shift from a more mechanistic view of systems, to one where sustainability is viewed as an emergent property of a complex system. To explore this further, several researchers are working with agent based modeling techniques .
Exergy analysis is performed in the field of industrial ecology to use energy more efficiently. The term exergy was coined by Zoran Rant in 1956, but the concept was developed by J. Willard Gibbs. In recent decades, utilization of exergy has spread outside of physics and engineering to the fields of industrial ecology, ecological economics, systems ecology, and energetics.
Recently, there has been work advocating for large scale photovoltaic production facilities in an industrial ecology setting. These facilities not only reduce their environmental impact but also decrease the costs of photovoltaic productions to as little as $1 per Watt by economy of scale.
Read more about this topic: Industrial Ecology
Famous quotes containing the words future and/or directions:
“If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to anotherand always into a better setthings might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the oceanthere is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.”
—Alexander Herzen (18121870)
“The traditional husband/father has always made choices concerning career, life-styles, values, and directions for the whole family, but he generally had another person on the teamcalled a wife. And his duties were always clear: Bring home the bacon and take out the garbage.”
—Donna N. Douglass (20th century)