Sustainability Assessments for the Low-Carbon Economy

Tine Compernolle is since September 2020 FED-tWIN researcher at the University of Antwerp | Department Engineering Management | Research group environmental economics (Assistant Professor, 50%) and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences – the Geological Survey of Belgium (RBINS – GSB, senior researcher 50%). Tine has a PhD in Applied Economics (2012, UHasselt) and a master's in applied economics (2008, UHasselt). She worked as dr.-assistant at the UHasselt from 2013 until 2016. In 2016 she was granted an FWO post-doctoral fellowship for which she executed the research activities at the UAntwerp. Tine is an expert in techno-economic assessments, environmental life cycle assessments, and real options analysis applied to evaluate the decision to invest in green supply chains (bio-energy, carbon capture, utilization, and storage, deep geothermal energy) and to analyze trade-offs in associated environmental and economic impacts. Through several research stays abroad at the University of Tilburg and the University of York; she deepened her expertise in the real options theory to account for multiple sources of uncertainty and flexibility options.

Giovanna Sauve is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium, in the SAM group

(Sustainability Assessments of Material Life Cycles and Circular Economy) of Prof. Karel Van Acker. Energy engineer by background, she obtained her PhD at KU Leuven focusing on the environmental impact assessment of resource recovery through enhanced landfill mining (ELFM). In particular, her research aimed at including site-specific factors and parameter variability in the environmental impact assessment of landfills and ELFM valorization routes. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, and her research focuses on the life cycle assessment of emerging technologies and circular strategies, and development of approaches and tools for the sustainability assessment of

different systems. She is also business developer for the Flanders Make @KU Leuven core lab, where she works on research and its valorization for the manufacturing industry.

Robert Malina is a Full Professor for Environmental Economics at Hasselt University and Director of the Centre for Environmental Sciences (CMK), a multidisciplinary institute with >200 researchers from a broad set of academic disciplines (environmental biology, epidemiology, zoology, toxicology, applied chemistry, nuclear engineering, environmental economics, environmental law). He is also a Research Affiliate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

CMK research addresses challenges of high societal urgency that require analyses that span across the boundaries of different scientific domains and disciplines and necessitate fundamental as well as applied research. His research is focused on holistic economic assessments in the field of energy, transport, and the environment, such as, for example, the impact of climate change on ecosystems and the services they provide, the tension between economic growth and environmental sustainability; and the challenge to marry the need of the aviation sector to significantly reduce emissions with our desire to fly. One of his core areas of research for more than a decade now is sustainable aviation fuels, in particular with regard to assessments on their economic and environmental viability and with regard to designing methods to appropriately account for those fuels in international climate regulation. The work that he does aims to be a source of robust science-driven advice for governmental agencies and businesses, to help improve technological and environmental decision-making.