This special issue offers selected papers from PRES’09 conference and covers environmental policy, decision support tools and pollution reduction technologies as themes. There are various mainly multidisciplinary specific issues included in this theme: natural laws relations to the development of the human society, utilization of waste from phosphorus production, synthesis of resource conservation network, simulator for logistic networks, synthesis of regional networks for the supply of biomass originated energy, spatial information systems for emission reduction, relations between thermal degradations in polymer modified asphalt, advanced NOx prediction in gas turbine and finally efficient and environmentally friendly energy systems for regions. They have been selected to provide inside to various fields related to environmental policies and pollution reduction technologies. Their variety demonstrates rather clearly how comprehensive are the issues include in this theme. The theme includes both new methodology and applications studies. Important features are covered by several works related to the regional sustainable development based on renewable energy supply minimizing the emissions and pollution.

The comprehensive overview of these topics from the point of its historical development has been presented somewhere (Friedler 2009, 2010). The study presented by Peter Glavič from Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Maribor, Slovenia is titled as Natural laws dominate the human society (Glavič 2010). It provides an interesting philosophical and a rather controversial view point of a prominent academic on the interaction between nature and society and the dominating influence of the laws of nature. The author states that human evolution is governed by non-equilibrium thermodynamics of bio-systems which determine the skyrocketing pollution, endangering mankind to self-destroy the human race just the same way as yeast does when producing ethanol. The power of natural laws is stronger than the current cultural awareness of mankind. The author is convinced that only natural catastrophes can make people act towards lowering the pollution levels. The author is rather pessimistic in terms of humankind’s ability to act timely: although catastrophes are increasing at an exponential rate, it may be too late for human action. Perhaps heat waves, rise of sea level, desertization, or floods might be strong enough to make mankind duly respond in a cultural way.

Waste utilization in phosphorous industry is a painful problem which has not yet got its viable solution. In their study, entitled Utilization of Waste for Large Capacity Productions of Phosphorus-Containing Products Based on the System Analysis Methods Arkadiy Bessarabov, Aleksey Kvasyuk and Aleksey Kochetygov from the State Research Institute of Chemical Reagents and High Purity Chemical Substances (IREA), Moscow, Russian Federation and Igor Bulatov from The University of Manchester, UK, provide a description of an innovative strategy for phosphorus industry waste utilization (Bessarabov et al. 2010). The system is Continuous Acquisition and Life cycle Support-(CALS) based and is intended for company managers and policy makers to analyse performance of phosphorus companies. It involves the analysis of main indicators of innovative development of leading phosphorus sector companies taking into account the influence of innovations on reduction of environmental pollution. The analysis was done according to the following three top level criteria: the raw material and processing market analysis; analysis of processing technologies; and analysis of utilization products markets. Analysis of the technologies of phosphorus industry waste processing was carried out on the basis flexible technology of phosphoric sludge utilization case study.

Another aspect of resource conservation is discussed in Synthesis of Resource Conservation Network with Sink-Source Interaction by Cheng-Liang Chen, Jui-Yuan Lee from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, ROC, and Denny Kok Sum Ng, Dominic Chwan Yee Foo from University of Nottingham Malaysian Campus, Malaysia (Chen 2010a). The article is a further development of the work presented in (Chen 2010b). They introduced a mathematical model for synthesis of resource conservation networks with interception placement. A superstructure incorporating all feasible network configurations is described. The synthesis task involves the allocation and interception/regeneration of process sources to satisfy process sinks. The interactions between process sink and source are addressed and a literature case study is used to illustrate the proposed approach.

István Heckl, Károly Kalauz, László Halász, from University of Pannonia, Veszprém, Hungary and Péter Kalocsai from MOL Plc., Hungary are presenting Custom Simulator for Logistic Networks in Downstream (Heckl et al. 2010). The work that has significant practical value for the oil industry, which by its large capacity can also cause huge environmental problems and even disasters. Performing process simulations are especially important for the oil industry. One of the fields of application of process simulators is to schedule and coordinate the supply, the distribution and the storage of the raw materials, semi-finished and finished bulk products in the logistic system. The authors introduce a novel simulation method for transporting liquids by pipeline network to ensure the balance among product availability, sales and transport in production and distribution points.

A team of collaborators from University of Maribor in Slovenia and University of Pannonia in Veszprém, Hungary, Lidija Čuček, Hon Loong Lam, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, Petar Sabev Varbanov, Zdravko Kravanja presented a work entitled Synthesis of regional networks for the supply of energy and bioproducts (Čuček et al. 2010). Their contribution presented a novel method for the synthesis of regional renewable energy supply chains, based on Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP). Their method addressed the challenges presented by biomass resources—the distributive and varied availabilities regarding both location and time. This study also aims to maximise the economically viable utilisation of resources and at same time accounting for the competition between energy and food production. A four layer supply chain super structure has been developed. It included the harvesting, preparation, core processing and distribution of products. They considered that the system boundaries involve a region, which is then divided into zones for optimising conversion operations and transportation flows. An MILP model has been formulated with profit maximisation as the optimisation criterion. The environmental impact was evaluated by the carbon footprint (Lam et al. 2010). The sensitivity of the optimal solutions was analysed for different region sizes, transportation cost, pre-processing alternatives and the coproduction of food and energy.

Another information system is presented by Kálmán I. Kovács from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary in his article Spatial Information Systems for Emission Reduction (Kovács 2010). The author discusses the challenges which the implementation of the Lisbon process brings in the field of info-communication technologies and the fastest possible build-up of information (knowledge-based) society. The article describes the outstanding role of spatial information systems—as a new tool provided by information technology—in the Kyoto process, through its application in two significant areas of economy—transportation and forest management. The use of modern info-communication technologies is a prerequisite to both intelligent transport systems and meaningful land and parcel registry, forest management that support our global environmental efforts. Geospatial information systems are the key to the better management of transport capacities and forest management—two of the largest areas of human contribution towards the decay of Earth’s ecosystem. The article is intended to raise awareness of the policy makers and the industry of the opportunities and challenges the geospatial information systems bring to the modern world.

In the technology part, covering various environmental important application and implementation are the results of profound research work carried out by Motoyuki Sugano, Yuusuke Iwabuchi, Tohru Watanabe, Jun Kajita, Kohji Iwata and Katsumi Hirano from Nihon University in Japan. The authors of the article entitled Relations between Thermal Degradations of SBS Copolymer and Asphalt Substrate in Polymer Modified Asphalt (Sugano et al. 2010) have investigated in details the chemical characteristics of modified asphalt (MA) during thermal degradation process. The variations in the chemical characteristics of asphalt constituents and styrenebutadiene–styrene triblock copolymer in the polymer modified asphalt during degradation process were studied to design the effective recycle method of MA. The authors discuss different aspects of the problem including the effects of the period of thermal degradation of MA, the content of asphaltene constituent in MA, etc. They found out that the yield of polar constituent (asphaltene) increased gradually with decomposition of SBS during thermal degradation of MA. Decomposition of SBS can be enhanced by the low molecular weight substrate, such as aromatic oil. On the other hand, decomposition of SBS can be inhibited by MA of high asphaltene content.

To meet the European and especially European Union legislation objectives on pollutant emissions such as like nitric oxides (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO), it is vital to have numerical tools that could speedily predict quickly NO and CO emissions when operating gas turbines. Mohamed Kanniche from EDF, France, in his article Coupling CFD with Chemical Reactor Network for advanced NOx prediction in gas turbine (Kanniche 2010) describes the study carried out by EDF R&D on developing a 3D turbulent gas combustion model for several past few years. The author points out that the introduction of complex chemical kinetics in 3D turbulent combustion code is still too CPU-time consuming to be performed for an industrial use. The study focuses on the impact of air ambient air conditions (temperature and relative humidity) on NO production by industrial gas turbines. The detailed chemical kinetic scheme is at first stage initially validated by laboratory tests of on jet-stirred reactor.

Sustainable development requires maximum possible utilisation of renewable sources as well as minimisation of waste production and waste recycling. However, the global economic crisis has brought about several aspects that have been neglected before. For example, it is difficult to find a market for much of sorted PET bottles and paper and thus sorting itself and recycling can loose its meaning. This gives rise to a question, whether current procedures and technologies are appropriate enough. In their study Efficient and environmentally friendly energy systems for microregions, Vladimír Ucekaj, Marek Šarlej, Radim Puchýř, Jaroslav Oral, Petr Stehlík from Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic (Učekaj et al. 2010), try to give a methodology to answer that question. They offer a new approach which lies in maximising waste processing (sorting, recycling incineration, etc.) in the place of its production, together with emphasis to maximise efficiency of waste treatment by minimisation of transport distances, labour costs and using synergic effects of different several technologies in an open central controlled system called ‘MICROREGION’.

There are numerous problems which modern society must face in seeking to secure a sustainable development. Amongst important issues are reduction of energy use which induced climate changes and reduction of usage of raw materials and consequently minimisation of the waste and effluents. Due to the complexity of the global challenges the world is facing each research team had limits to the issues that they could effectively address. Therefore the both broader and specialised themes should be tackled. The successful solutions are based on the specialised inputs from leading scientists and technologists. Some of them related to energy environmental deductions have been listed elsewhere (Dovì et al. 2009). Although, new insights are emerging on this theme-related problem many of them still deserve further intensive research. A wide overview of this theme has been presented by Friedler (2009, 2010).