The majority of Dutch peatlands are drained and used intensively as grasslands for dairy farming. This delivers high productivity but causes severe damage to the provisioning of ecosystem services. Peatland rewetting is the best way to reverse the damage, but high water levels do not fit with intensive …

The main cause of deforestation and forest degradation is the expansion of agricultural land to produce various commodities. For this reason, the European Commission has developed a new regulation on deforestation-free products. Particularly palm oil is becoming increasingly important in terms of imports …

Plastic is one of the biggest contributors to pollution of the planet. Due to the low recyclability of oil-based plastics, most plastic is being disposed into the environment. According to plastic oceans, 10 million tons of plastic are dumped into oceans annually. Currently, researchers are developing …

A major target of the European Green Deal is to raise the 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction target to 55% compared to 1990. This high ambition includes an increase of the energy performance of buildings and additional generation of renewable energy in all sectors. The tertiary sector, including …

The present work aims at providing broader insight into the environmental impact of milk production by comparing greenhouse gas (GHG) and nitrogen (N) emissions of milk production among the intensive and extensive dairy farming systems from production and land-use perspectives. Three dairy farms in the …

Greenhouse gas emissions from dairy farming have been a topic of concern all over the world with some countries having taken pilot studies in quantifying the emissions in their farms. This study was done to calculate and compare the carbon footprint in small and large-scale dairy farms in Zimbabwe.

Limestone is a sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Limestone is, among many applications, used as a raw material for the manufacture of quicklime. When limestone is heated, the stone calcinates and quicklime is formed. The primary use of quicklime is in the steel and …

For centuries, natural gas has been one of humanity’s main energy sources. The gas sector is still heavily reliant on natural gas production; however, as natural gas fields contain only a finite quantity of gas, its continued extraction is leading to the resource’s depletion. Furthermore, natural gas …

Renewable energy systems are a crucial technological development needed to combat climate change. This thesis covers the design and implementation of a mathematical optimization model, which calculates the lowest cost of hydrogen for certain renewable energy system configurations. The output of the model …

Over the last decades, the increased demand in beef by the growing population led to an industrialization and intensification of the production systems. This resulted in many issues such as environmental impact, animal welfare, consumers acceptability, resource-use efficiency, growing reliance on edible …