The lecture offers an overview of the modern metrics of energy-related environmental impact, called “Footprints” and the methods for their reduction and achieving sustainability. Often they are also referred to as “Ecological Footprints”. The course has several major parts:

(i) Introduction to environmental impacts – interactions of human society with the environment. This part introduces the topics, starting from a discussion of the main issues and problems of environmental pollution and depletion of natural resources from their natural storages. The emphasis is put on the need for circularity of the energy and resource use and product/by-product reuse, implementing the Circular Economy principles, to minimise energy generation and waste discharge. Within that context, the global energy and water flows are overviewed, including the flows of virtual water. Definitions of sustainability and sustainable development are given. The Life Cycle thinking and the fundamentals of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) are introduced. The part concludes with the main principles and indicators important for measuring environmental impacts;

(ii) Footprints – definitions, meaning and use. This part introduces in more detail the key footprints, important for evaluating and altering the performance of industrial, commercial and societal systems in terms of environmental impacts and sustainability. The indicators include those for Greenhouse Gas (GHG), water Footprint, Nitrogen Footprint and other;

(iii)      Strategies and methods for footprint minimisation. It starts by presenting the possible measures and degrees of freedom to reduce footprints. They include resource-saving via the resource/waste hierarchy, the use of renewables. That is followed by more detailed concepts, principles and methods for the simultaneous reduction of footprints and resource intake. Methods for minimising GHG footprints and energy and water footprint and water demands are discussed.

It concludes with the Environmental Performance Strategy Map – a concept that allows visualising and simultaneously optimising the environmental and economic performance indicators of human activity – an industrial site or other business activities.