Towards Win-Win Policies for Healthy and Sustainable Diets in Switzerland.

The first Swiss national dietary survey (MenuCH) was used to screen disease burdens and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of Swiss diets (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, slimming), with a focus on gender and education level. The Health Nutritional Index (HENI), a novel disease burden-based nutritional index built on the Global Burden of Disease studies, was used to indicate healthiness using comparable, relative disease burden scores. Low whole grain consumption and high processed meat consumption are priority risk factors. Non-processed red meat and dairy make a nearly negligible contribution to disease burden scores, yet are key drivers of diet-related GHGs. Swiss diets, including vegetarian, ranged between 1.1-2.6 tons of CO2e/person/year, above the Swiss federal recommendation 0.6 ton CO2e/person/year for all consumption categories. This suggests that only changing food consumption practices will not suffice towards achieving carbon reduction targets: Systemic changes to food provisioning processes are also necessary. Finally, men with higher education had the highest dietary GHG emissions per gram of food, and the highest disease burden scores. Win-win policies to improve health and sustainability of Swiss diets would increase whole grain consumption for all, and decrease alcohol and processed meat consumption especially for men of higher education levels.

Techno-economic analysis of lignocellulosic ethanol: A review.

Lignocellulosic ethanol is expected to be commercialised during the next decade as renewable energy for transport. Competiveness with first generation bioethanol and with gasoline is commonly considered in techno-economic analyses for commercial stage. Several existing reviews conclude about the high spread of current and projected production costs of lignocellulosic ethanol due to the significant differences in assumptions concerning the following factors: composition and cost of feedstock, process design, conversion efficiency, valorisation of co-products, and energy conservation. Focusing on the studies in the United States of America and in Europe, the present review investigates the different natures of the techno-economic evaluations during the development process of the supply chain i.e., standard costing with respect to Value Engineering, and Target Costing based on the projected market price. The paper highlights the significant contribution of feedstock to the lignocellulosic ethanol production cost and the need to consider competition between different uses for resources. It is recommended the use of a value-based approach that considers sustainability characteristics and potential competition for resources complementarily to Target Costing and Value Engineering.