Screening of Factors for Assessing the Environmental and Economic Efficiency of Investment Projects in the Energy Sector.

In view of the current agenda in the field of climate and environmental conservation, the requirements for environmental project appraisal are being tightened: the evaluation of environmental indicators of project implementation should be carried out on a par with indicators of its economic performance. Current approaches to the assessment of environmental and economic efficiency do not completely cover the negative environmental impacts of a project's implementation, and this reduces the effectiveness of the evaluation. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a system of environmental indicators that will address the specifics of the industry. This is made possible on the basis of determining a list of key factors that should be included in the evaluation system. The purpose of this study is to determine the most significant factors for establishing a simple yet thorough assessment framework to evaluate the efficiency of energy investment projects. Research methodology includes an a priori ranking method and analysis of interrelations between factors. Based on the results obtained, the authors have formed a list of key factors that could become the basis of a future system of environmental indicators for the efficiency assessment of energy projects.

Remediation of Soil Polluted by Organic Compounds Through Chemical Oxidation and Phytoremediation Combined with DCT.

Soils contaminated with organic substances is an important issue across Europe: In some areas, these are the main causes of pollution, or the second after contamination from waste disposal. This paper included an experimental application that compared three methods of remediation of contaminated sites, based on electric fields: A single treatment (electroremediation); and two combined treatments, phyto-electrochemical and electrooxidation (a combination of chemical treatment and a DCT-direct current technology). The contaminated soil was taken from a former industrial area devoted to oil refining, located between two roads: The one national and the other one for industrial use. Nine soil samples were collected at two depths (0.2 and 0.4 m). The initial characterization of the soil showed a density of 1.5 g/cm³ and a moisture of about 20%; regarding grain size, 50% of the soil had particles with a diameter less than 0.08 mm. The electrochemical treatment and electrooxidation had an efficiency of 20% while the two combined methods had efficiencies of 42.5% for electrooxidation (with H2O2) and 20% for phyto-electroremediation (phyto-ER) with poinsettias.