The energy audit for a building is a procedure designed mainly to obtain adequate knowledge of the energy consumption profile, identify, and quantify opportunities for energy savings by a cost-benefit analysis and report, clearly and comprehensively, about the obtained results. If the audit is referred to a building with a significant historical and artistic value, a compatibility evaluation of the energy saving interventions with the architectural features should also be developed. In this paper, analysing the case study of a historical building used as public offices in Pisa (Italy), the authors describe how it is possible to conduct an energy audit activity (especially dedicated to the lighting system) and they show how, for this type of buildings, it is possible to obtain significant energy savings with a refurbishment of the lighting system. A total number of seven interventions on indoor and outdoor lighting sub-systems were analysed in the paper. They are characterised by absolu... [more]

Globally, wind power is growing fast and in Sweden alone more than 3000 turbines have been installed since the mid-1990s. Although the number of decommissioned turbines so far is few, the high installation rate suggests that a similarly high decommissioning rate can be expected at some point in the future. If the waste material from these turbines is not handled sustainably the whole concept of wind power as a clean energy alternative is challenged. This study presents a generally applicable method and quantification based on statistics of the waste amounts from wind turbines in Sweden. The expected annual mean growth is 12% until 2026, followed by a mean increase of 41% until 2034. By then, annual waste amounts are estimated to 240,000 tonnes steel and iron (16% of currently recycled materials), 2300 tonnes aluminium (4%), 3300 tonnes copper (5%), 340 tonnes electronics (<1%) and 28,000 tonnes blade materials (barely recycled today). Three studied scenarios suggest that a well-func... [more]

In this paper, the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) model is constructed to simulate six scenarios for forecasting national electricity demand in China. The results show that in 2020 the total electricity demand will reach 6407.9~7491.0 billion KWh, and will be 6779.9~10,313.5 billion KWh in 2030. Moreover, under the assumption of power production just meeting the social demand and considering the changes in the scale and technical structure of power industry, this paper simulates two scenarios to estimate carbon emissions and carbon intensity till 2030, with 2012 as the baseline year. The results indicate that the emissions intervals are 4074.16~4692.52 million tCO₂ in 2020 and 3948.43~5812.28 million tCO₂ in 2030, respectively. Carbon intensity is 0.63~0.64 kg CO₂/KWh in 2020 and 0.56~0.58 kg CO₂/KWh in 2030. In order to accelerate carbon reduction, the future work should focus on making a more stringent criterion on the intensity of industrial power consumption and exp... [more]

Chinese energy consumption has been dominated by coal for decades, but this needs to change to protect the environment and mitigate anthropogenic climate change. Renewable energy development is needed to fulfil the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) for the post-2020 period, as stated on the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. This paper reviews the potential of renewable energy in China and how it could be utilised to meet the INDC goals. A business-as-usual case and eight alternative scenarios with 40% renewable electricity are explored using the EnergyPLAN model to visualise out to the year 2030. Five criteria (total cost, total capacity, excess electricity, CO₂ emissions, and direct job creation) are used to assess the sustainability of the scenarios. The results indicate that renewables can meet the goal of a 20% share of non-fossil energy in primary energy and 40%⁻50% share of non-fossil energy in electricity power. The low nuclear-hydro power... [more]

Renewable energy sources are vital to achieving Europe’s 2030 energy transition goals. Technological innovation, driven by public expenditures on research and development, is a major driver for this change. Thus, an extensive dataset on these expenditures of the European Member States and the European Commission, dating back to the early 1970s, was created. This paper creates predictive scenarios of public investment in renewable energy research and development in Europe based on this historical dataset and current trends. Funding from both, European Member States and the European Commission, between today and 2030 are used in the analysis. The impact on the cumulative knowledge stock is also estimated. Two projection scenarios are presented: (1) business as usual; and (2) an advanced scenario, based on the assumption that the Mission Innovation initiative causes public expenditures to increase in the coming years. Both scenarios are compared to the European 2030 climate and energy fra... [more]

This article reviews the literature on the past cost dynamics of various renewable, fossil fuel and nuclear electricity generation technologies. It identifies 10 different factors which have played key roles in influencing past cost developments according to the literature. These 10 factors are: deployment-induced learning, research, development and demonstration (RD&D)-induced learning, knowledge spillovers from other technologies, upsizing, economies of manufacturing scale, economies of project scale, changes in material and labour costs, changes in fuel costs, regulatory changes, and limits to the availability of suitable sites. The article summarises the relevant literature findings for each of these 10 factors and provides an overview indicating which factors have impacted on which generation technologies. The article also discusses the insights gained from the review for a better understanding of possible future cost developments of electricity generation technologies. Finall... [more]

Wave characteristic assessments of wave energy test sites provide a greater understanding of prevailing wave conditions and are therefore extremely important to both wave energy test site operators and clients as they can inform wave energy converter design, optimisation, deployment, operation and maintenance. This research presents an assessment of the wave resource at the Atlantic Marine Energy Test Site (AMETS) on the west coast of Ireland based on 12-years of modelled data from January 2004 to December 2015. The primary aim is to provide an assessment of annual and seasonal wave characteristics and resource variability at the two deployment berths which comprise the site. A nested model has been developed using Simulating WAves Nearshore (SWAN) to replicate wave propagations from regional to local scale with a 0.05° resolution model covering the northeast Atlantic and a 0.0027° resolution model covering AMETS. The coarse and fine models have been extensively validated against avail... [more]

In the last decade, increased environmental awareness has prompted the adoption of incentives for exploiting renewable energy sources. Among these, biogas production has received a certain attention in developed countries. Nonetheless, the subsidies provided have posed the problem of an activity (the production of bioenergy) that engages in direct competition with food and feed production for limited resources, like agricultural land. Even if this competition may be softened by allocating marginal land and/or using dedicated non-agricultural crops, empirical evidence shows that biogas plants have been developed in highly-productive agricultural areas, using increasing amounts of maize silage as feedstock. Thus, studies aimed at measuring the effect of biogas production on agricultural activities are needed in order to avoid this socially undesirable outcome. The paper presents an econometric estimation of the impact of biogas plants on farmland rental values of a Northern Italian rural... [more]

Among the several typologies of storage technologies, mainly on different physical principles (mechanical, electrical and chemical), hydrogen produced by power to gas (P2G) from renewable energy sources complies with chemical storage principle and is based on the conversion of electrical energy into chemical energy by means of the electrolysis of water which does not produce any toxic or climate-relevant emission. This paper aims to pinpoint the potential uses of renewable hydrogen storage systems in Europe, analysing current and potential locations, regulatory framework, governments’ outlooks, economic issues, and available renewable energy amounts. The expert opinion survey, already used in many research articles on different topics including energy, has been selected as an effective method to produce realistic results. The obtained results highlight strategies and actions to optimize the storage of hydrogen produced by renewables to face varying electricity demand and generation-dri... [more]

Accounting for transportation is an important part of the life cycle analysis (LCA) of beef cattle production because it is associated with energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes the development and application of a model that estimates energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of transport in beef cattle production. The animal transport model is based on the weight and number of animals in each weight category, type of trailer, vehicle, and fuel used. The energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission estimates of animal feed transportation are based on the weight of a truckload and the number of truckloads of feed transported. Our results indicate that a truckload is travelling approximately 326 km in connection with beef cattle production in the study region. The fuel consumption amounts to 24 L of fossil fuel per 1000 kg of boneless beef. The corresponding greenhouse gas emission is 83 kg. It appears from our results that the majority of energy... [more]

According to recent technology road maps, system cost reductions and development of standardised plug-and-function systems are some of the most important goals for solar heating technology development. Retrofitting hot water boilers in single-family houses when installing solar collectors has the potential to significantly reduce both material and installation costs. Previous studies have investigated such retrofitting, using theoretical simulations and laboratory tests, but no actual installations were made and tested in practice. This article describes the installation, measured performance and cost effectiveness of a retrofitting solution that converts existing domestic hot water heaters to a solar domestic hot water system. The measured performance is characterised by the monthly and annual solar fractions. The cost effectiveness is evaluated by a life-cycle cost analysis, comparing the retrofitted system to a conventional solar domestic hot water system and the case without any so... [more]

In July 2013, the Italian photovoltaic (PV) support policies changed the feed-in tariff (FIT) mechanism and turned to a tax credits program, which is currently in force. The aim of this paper is to investigate how such a radical change has influenced the electricity demand coverage of the PV systems installed in urban contexts. A methodology, which connects the economic assessment to a detailed architectural and energy suitability analysis, was applied to some case studies to analyse the relationships between the physical parameters related to multi-storey buildings (roof shapes, number of floors and area of flats) and the most relevant economic and financial features affecting the viability of rooftop PV systems. The study, which considers only the electricity produced by the PV systems that are economically profitable, highlighted that the tax credits scheme is even more effective in covering the electrical consumption of densely urbanised Italian city districts. The results, which a... [more]

Economic development usually leads to increased energy consumption, which in turn will result in an increase in carbon emissions. To break the relationship between economic development and carbon emissions, scholars have turned their attention to the phenomenon of decoupling. In this paper, we studied the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth of the equipment manufacturing industry in China from 2000 to 2014. We adapted the LMDI decomposition method, and we used the Tapio decoupling evaluation model to analyze our data. We found that the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth of China’s equipment manufacturing industry is weak, which indicates the industry is experiencing faster economic growth than carbon emission growth. We found the economic output is the factor that has the strongest influence on the industry’s carbon emission, and energy consumption intensity has the strongest relationship with the decoupling of economic... [more]

How do we know which energy technologies or resources are worth pursuing and which aren’t? One way to answer that question is to compare the energy return of a certain technology—i.e., how much energy is remaining after accounting for the amount of energy expended in the production and delivery process. Such energy return ratios (the most famous of which is energy return on investment (EROI)) fall within the field of net energy analysis (NEA), and provide an easy way to determine which technology is “better”; i.e., higher Energy Return Ratios (ERRs) are, certeris paribus, better than lower ERRs. Although useful as a broad measure of energy profitability, comparisons can also be misleading, particularly if the units being compared are different. For example, the energy content of electricity produced from a photovoltaic cell is different than the energy content of coal at the mine-mouth, yet these are often compared directly within the literature. These types of inconsistencies are comm... [more]

Environmental taxation represents a key influence on sustainable development in post-transition countries. Romania has experienced important transformations of environmental policy, including taxation, due to sustained reliance on traditional energy sources to satisfy its energy needs. The aim of this paper is to show a possible causal relationship between the Romanian GDP and several explanatory variables related to taxation of environmental damage and energy generation and consumption in the country. In order to do this, the authors make use of several statistical tests to verify the existence of a meaningful relationship between economic variables expressed in time series. The study has also attempted to identify the influence of environmental taxation on ensuring green economic development, starting from the premise that for emergent economies these taxes provide both a GDP increase and prevent environmental degradation by decreasing the pollution and environmentally harmful suppli... [more]

State and regional governments in the U.S. and abroad are looking to market-based approaches to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from the electric sector, and in the U.S. as a compliance approach to meeting the aggressive targets of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Clean Power Plan. Auction-based approaches, like those used in the Northeast U.S. and California, are both recommended strategies under the Plan and attractive to state governments because they can generate significant revenue from the sale of emissions permits. However, given the nature of imperfect competition in existing electricity markets, particularly at the state and regional level, the issue of market power is a concern at the forefront. This paper provides the results from a controlled laboratory experiment of an auction-based emissions market in the electricity sector. The results show that government revenue from auctioning emissions permits is substantially lower when market concentration is only mo... [more]

Over the past three decades, China’s economy has witnessed remarkable growth, with an average annual growth rate over 9%. However, China also faces great challenges to balance this spectacular economic growth and continuously increasing energy use like many other economies in the world. With the aim of designing effective energy and environmental policies, policymakers are required to master the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. Therefore, in the case of North China, a multivariate model employing panel data analysis method based on the Cobb-Douglas production function which introduces electricity consumption as a main factor was established in this paper. The equilibrium relationship and causal relationship between real GDP, electricity consumption, total investment in fixed assets, and the employment were explored using data during the period of 1995⁻2014 for six provinces in North China, including Beijing City, Tianjin City, Hebei Province, Shanxi Province... [more]

This article provides a review of different methods for managing waste tyres. Around 1.5 billion scrap tyres make their way into the environmental cycle each year, so there is an extreme demand to manage and mitigate the environmental impact which occurs from landfilling and burning. Numerous approaches are targeted to recycle and reuse the tyre rubber in various applications. Among them, one of the most important methods for sustainable environmental stewardship is converting tyre rubber components into bio-oil. In this study, scrap tyre management techniques including landfill, retreading, recycling, combustion, and conversion to liquid fuels was reviewed (including gasification, hydrothermal liquefaction, and pyrolysis). The effects of parameters such as reactor types, pyrolysis temperature, and catalyst on the oil, gas and solid products in pyrolysis process were investigated.

There has been a continuous growth in ecological agriculture (EA) in recent years. It is recognized as a production system with rational energy use and low demand for fossil fuels. There are many studies relating to this subject, in contrast to the few studies regarding the use of energy and its impact on the environment in ecological greenhouses. This article analyzes the strategies adopted by a Transformational Agricultural Society (Sociedad Agraria de Transformación) in order to improve energy efficiency in ecological greenhouses, with regards to the use of fossil fuels. The methodology is based on the Working With People (WWP) Model, which involves social learning processes over 30 years in one of the largest regions of ecological crops in Spain. The results show that the measures taken to manage the greenhouses have achieved a decrease of over 80% in terms of fossil fuel consumption. The experience demonstrates that EA, as opposed to conventional agriculture (CA), is a system with... [more]

This paper statistically quantifies the lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from six distinct reactor-based (boiling water reactor (BWR), pressurized water reactor (PWR), light water reactor (LWR), heavy-water-moderated reactor (HWR), gas-cooled reactor (GCR), fast breeder reactor (FBR)) nuclear power generation systems by following a two-step approach that included (a) performing a review of the lifecycle assessment (LCA) studies on the reactor-based nuclear power generation systems; and (b) statistically evaluating the lifecycle GHG emissions (expressed in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour, gCO₂e/kWh) for each of the reactor-based nuclear power generation systems to assess the role of different types of nuclear reactors in the reduction of the lifecycle GHG emissions. Additionally, this study quantified the impacts of fuel enrichment methods (centrifuge, gaseous diffusion) on GHG emissions. The mean lifecycle GHG emissions resulting from the use of BWR (sample... [more]

Renewable energy resources and technologies are sufficient to meet all of humanity’s energy requirements, provided that the transition to renewables is accompanied in parallel by intense, disciplined initiatives to design, fabricate, and distribute ubiquitously an emerging class of ultra-efficient energy consuming devices. Renewables can thereby power devices which are disruptively more energy-efficient in the delivery of fundamental energy services (food production, cooking, heating, cooling, mobility, logistics, lighting, industrial processes, information systems, etc.). Rather than substituting new energy sources to directly power legacy devices that were originally designed on the basis of fossil fuels, designers will develop these novel devices to deliver superior performance in all respects: cleaner, safer, more durable, more convenient, and more economical. This Solarevolution, like the Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago, is about transforming the artifacts of human soc... [more]

This paper provides a critical study of current Australian and leading international policies aimed at supporting electrical energy storage for stationary power applications with a focus on battery and hydrogen storage technologies. It demonstrates that global leaders such as Germany and the U.S. are actively taking steps to support energy storage technologies through policy and regulatory change. This is principally to integrate increasing amounts of intermittent renewable energy (wind and solar) that will be required to meet high renewable energy targets. The relevance of this to the Australian energy market is that whilst it is unique, it does have aspects in common with the energy markets of these global leaders. This includes regions of high concentrations of intermittent renewable energy (Texas and California) and high penetration rates of residential solar photovoltaics (PV) (Germany). Therefore, Australian policy makers have a good opportunity to observe what is working in an i... [more]

The companies involved in the energy sector must reinvent themselves to be innovative and adaptable to contemporary environmental changes. The promotion of renewable energy in rural communities is a great challenge for these companies. They should focus on improving the environment scanning actions and the knowledge management (KM) system and enhancing the collective intelligence to avoid the loss of information, to foster innovation, and to maintain a competitive advantage. To achieve these goals, energy companies require appropriate management tools and practices. The purpose of this study is to propose a theoretical framework of organizational intelligence (OI) supported by a cross-perspective analysis of various aspects: economic intelligence (EI) and KM practices, entropy processes, and organizational enablers. A pilot investigation for testing the framework in the case of Transelectrica S.A. has been elaborated. The findings reveal that the elements of the OI framework are embedd... [more]

In order to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, policy action that addresses vehicle emissions is essential. While many previous studies have focused on light-duty vehicles (LDV), little is known about medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDV). This study lays the groundwork for future MHDV investigations in the Republic of Korea by developing an MHDV CO₂ emissions inventory. The bottom-up approach was used to calculate national CO₂ emissions. Simulation methods that calculated the CO₂ emissions of each vehicle and statistical data, such as vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and the number of registered vehicles were used to predict CO₂ emissions. The validity of this simulation model was examined by comparing it with the chassis dynamometer test results. The results of this study showed that the CO₂ emissions of MHDV in 2015 were 24.47 million tons, which was 25.5% of the total road transportation CO₂ emissions, despite only comprising 4.2% of the total vehicles. Trucks emitted 69.6% and... [more]

The qualification and validation of nuclear technologies are daunting tasks for fusion demonstration (DEMO) and power plants. This is particularly true for advanced designs that involve harsh radiation environment with 14 MeV neutrons and high-temperature operating regimes. This paper outlines the unique qualification and validation processes developed in the U.S., offering the only access to the complete fusion environment, focusing on the most prominent U.S. blanket concept (the dual cooled PbLi (DCLL)) along with testing new generations of structural and functional materials in dedicated test modules. The venue for such activities is the proposed Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF), which is viewed as an essential element of the U.S. fusion roadmap. A staged blanket testing strategy has been developed to test and enhance the DCLL blanket performance during each phase of FNSF D-T operation. A materials testing module (MTM) is critically important to include in the FNSF as well to... [more]