The purpose of this thesis is to assess and compare the energy consumption and carbon footprints of two, online and offline, major movie rental services in Canada. The thesis is divided into two parts that represent two papers that are being published. The comprehensive literature survey provides the state-of-the-art in E-Commerce carbon footprinting with a new categorization framework. The model development and application compares the energy consumption and carbon footprints of the two business models via a systems approach and the Economic Input Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model and evaluates environmental performances. The portions of the logistics chains that were different in the two business models were analyzed and processes that were common were excluded. Regarding findings, the analyses conclude that the online movie rental service has lower carbon footprint than the offline one. We suggest practical implications for policy makers, government, businesses, and customers in movie rental industry. / This thesis contains two papers, recently presented at international conferences and accepted for publication in recognized journals.

Achieving a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions has become a key challenge facing global society and its economies. Despite this, tourism policy and strategic planning rarely acknowledge carbon mitigation as a strategic objective and tourism as a sector is rarely recognised in low-carbon plans. This situation represents a substantial challenge, as tourism and travel have a high-carbon impact and carbon mitigation is hindered by lack of carbon data, and a continued drive for economic growth. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the effectiveness of carbon footprinting and scenario modelling to help examine the opportunities and challenges for implementing low-carbon tourism pathways in destinations, and to consider how the opportunities could be enabled. The 'REAP Tourism' footprint tool was used to investigate the carbon impact of visitors to destinations across South West England. The purpose was to estimate emissions, suggest a baseline footprint and offer alternative growth and mitigation scenarios of how tourism could more effectively reduce emissions. Through participatory workshops, evaluation questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, stakeholders identified the limitations and benefits of carbon modelling and the challenges and opportunities for a transition towards low-carbon tourism in destinations. The results demonstrated that the carbon footprint was a useful and informative indicator. The baseline data and scenarios provided a basis for constructive low-carbon dialogue with tourism stakeholders, which helped to challenge current thinking and facilitate the co-creation of ideas and potential interventions. A range of low-carbon opportunities and challenges were identified relating to the cultural, political and structural components of tourism governance. A conceptual low-carbon transition framework is proposed, to illustrate the opportunities. Stakeholder dialogue and debate, informed by quantitative and qualitative data, is central to the framework. Cultural, political and structural opportunities for change are also identified. Further investigation is needed to test the framework and examine the levels of influence and capabilities of different types of tourism stakeholders. The use of integrated environmental-economic indicators to inform national and local tourism policy and strategy, also require application. This thesis contributes to an emerging body of knowledge on the governance of low-carbon destinations, from a practical, methodological and conceptual basis.

Sustainability is increasingly becoming a significant part of strategic asset management worldwide. Road agencies are providing guidelines to assess the relative sustainability of road projects. Unfortunately, environmental features of a road project are still considered as stand-alone evaluations, an added value. Very little has been done to integrate environmental impacts as a part of pavement management systems and other decision support tools to choose between different strategies. In this way, being awarded with a "green" certificate for a specific road project could result in the belief that recognition would correspond to the optimal strategy. Furthermore, a road project awarded with a "green" rating during the construction phase does not mean that the project results "green" if a life cycle approach is considered. Indeed, the most environmental friendly strategies may not be the ones with the highest performance. Using "greener" materials or performing recycle-related practices may lead to a lower performance over the life cycle and therefore produce an increase in maintenance needed, which could in turn result into more congestion due to work zones and higher total emissions. Therefore, construction and maintenance strategies should be analyzed according to three main parameters: cost, performance or effectiveness, and environmental impacts. The cost analysis part takes into account outflows over the service life of the pavement according to the well-known Life Cycle Cost Analysis methodology. The cheapest maintenance technique over the analysis period was expounded and sensitivity analyses to involved factors were conducted. Performance assessment was developed according to experimental on site data gathered and analyzed over several years to develop deterioration pavement models. Effectiveness of maintenance treatments is further provided and compared to the volume of traffic. In addition, environmental impacts related to maintenance and rehabilitation strategies were analyzed. Emissions were computed over the life cycle of the pavement from the manufacture of raw materials for the initial construction, placement, and maintenance phase. Finally, an optimization procedure was developed for including environmental impacts into a Pavement Management System. A methodology to set a multi-attribute approach system, computing costs, performance, and eco-efficiency over the life cycle of the pavement, is therefore proposed. / Ph. D.

Highway clients are increasingly concerned with the environmental consequences and sustainability implications of their highway maintenance service. This is because the service consumes a significant amount of natural resources, is financial and energy-intensive and is a large Greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter responsible for global warming and climate change. This has placed the highway maintenance sector, including its supply chain under increasing pressure to deliver well-maintained low-carbon maintenance service, whilst addressing its climate change impacts. The highway stakeholders increasing focus on carbon footprinting is a direct response to the legal obligation presented by the enactment of the UK s Climate Change Act (2008) and the Carbon Reduction Commitments. Investment decisions on highway infrastructure must now account for carbon and financial costs in a balanced manner. Highway clients now require their supply chains to demonstrate the capacity to reduce both direct and indirect carbon, and provide carbon footprint information relating to the work done or being tendered for. This is driving the sector to re-think its business operations within environmental, economic and social limits, which inherently presents risks and opportunities poorly understood by the stakeholders. It requires an in-depth understanding of the business operations, inputs and outputs. These business requirements are compounded given the lack of an agreed industrial methodology standard focusing on carbon footprinting, the knowledge and skill gaps, system boundary definitions, credible industrial data and their collection approach. The aim of this study is to develop a project-focused and process-based carbon footprinting methodology that includes a decision-support and carbon management tool to assist carbon management decision-making in highway maintenance planning and operation. This study then explored how the PAS2050 protocol can enhance the highway maintenance service delivery carbon footprinting and identify opportunities for reduction. It briefly reviews carbon emissions performance and the UK s highway maintenance sector, and developed a methodological framework that includes a carbon evaluation tool (the sponsor s business focus tool) based on the PAS2050 protocol. The framework developed is specific to highway maintenance planning and operation. It offers a carbon Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool that can identify emission hotspots across the process value chain, and inform a carbon reduction hierarchy. The implementation of the PAS2050-compliant methodology framework and the carbon evaluation tool for core highway maintenance processes (for example, pavement resurfacing, pavement marking, bulk lamp replacement and grass cutting), in addition to carbon footprinting across different site locations (urban, semi-urban and rural) are presented. The results indicate that materials production and their delivery to site (embodied carbon) are areas of carbon hotspots. This represents an important decision point for highway designers, managers and maintainers in order to deliver low-carbon service. These carbon hotspots suggest a less energy-intensive or green materials manufacturing process, responsible sourcing, use of recycled and secondary materials sourced locally (closer to sites) and delivered in bulk. The step-by-step carbon footprinting approach presented in this study is unique. It can be used by other sectors within the built environment as a pragmatic means of identifying and prioritising areas of potential carbon reduction through informed decision-making.