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Abstract For 118 million residential housing units in the U.S., there is currently a gap between the potential energy savings that can be achieved through the use of existing energy efficiency technologies, and the actual level of energy savings realized, particularly for the 37% of housing units that are considered residential rental properties. Additional quantifiable benefits are needed beyond energy savings to help further motivate residential property owners to invest in energy efficiency upgrades. This research focuses on assessing the adoption of energy efficient upgrades in U.S. residential housing and the impact on rental prices. Ten U.S. cities are chosen for analysis; these cities vary in size across multiple climate zones, and represent a diverse set of housing market conditions. Data was collected for over 159,000 rental property listings, their characteristics, and their energy efficiency measures listed in rental housing postings across each city. Following an extensive data quality control process, over thirty different types energy efficient features were identified. The level of adoption was determined for each city, ranging from 5.3% to 21.6%. Efficient lighting and appliances were among the most common, with many features doubling as energy efficient and other desirable aesthetic or comfort improvements. Then using propensity score matching and conditional mean comparison methods, the relative impact on rent charged in each city was calculated, which ranged from a 6% to 14.1% increase in rent for properties with energy efficient features, demonstrating a positive economic impact of these features, particularly for property owners. This was further subdivided into five types of energy efficiency upgrade and three housing types. Single family homes generally demanded higher premiums with energy efficient features, however there was not a consistent pattern across the types of efficient upgrades. The results of this work demonstrate that investment in energy efficient technologies has quantifiable benefits for rental property owners in the U.S. beyond just energy savings. This methodology and results can also be used in other cities and by property owners, utility companies, or others, ultimately encouraging further investment and positive economic impact in residential energy efficiency and in turn improving energy and resource conservation in the building sector.

Abstract This study develops a novel sustainability assessment methodology for energy systems using life-cycle emission factors and sustainability indicators. Here, the global warming and environmental impact dimensions of the sustainability assessment methodology are examined in detail. A comparative analysis shows that a wind-battery system produces fewer potential global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, air pollution, and water pollution impacts compared to a gas-fired system. The wind-battery system generates 13% of the life-cycle GHG emissions and 22% of the life-cycle ozone-depleting substance emissions of a gas-fired power plant. Nitrous oxide contributes more than 90% of the stratospheric ozone depletion potential of gas-fired and wind-battery systems.

It has long been established that mature forests are mosaics of patches in different development phases but it has seldom explicitly been taken into account in ecological studies. We demonstrate here that these development phases, which are related to the population dynamics of trees, play an important role in the distribution of fauna based on observations on frugivorous birds. In an area close to the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, we studied the abundance of large forest bird species in relation to forest development phases, with a methodology that seems promising for ecological diagnosis and prognosis in forest management planning. Fine-scale forest mapping and bird counts were carried out in two block-transects of 40 m x 3000 m. Tree sampling in a sub-transect was used to generate population characteristics of trees, Large bird species preferred mature or senescent forest patches, whereas relatively young, growing forest patches were avoided. Important large tree species such as Manilkara zapota, Thouinia paucidentata, Guaiacum sanctum and Esenbeckia pentaphylla, characteristic of older forest patches, showed skewed size distributions indicating stress or overexploitation. The population of M. zapota, a key fruiting species that accounted for 26.5% of the total woody biomass, was most heavily affected by stress. A future collapse in the population of M. zapota, a decrease of the total area of older forest, and a decline in the abundance of large birds is likely if stress on the system continues at this level. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract Geological sequestration of CO 2 is an immediately available and technologically feasible means of reducing CO 2 emissions into the atmosphere, which is particularly suited to landlocked sedimentary basins. Geoscience, engineering, economic and public issues need addressing by governments and industry before proceeding with full scale implementation. Specific site selection should be based on a suitability analysis, a proper inventory of potential sites, an assessment of the fate of the injected CO 2 and a capacity determination, together with surface criteria such as CO 2 capture and transport. The suitability analysis, both at the basin and regional scales, is based on geological, geothermal, hydrodynamic, basin maturity, economic and societal criteria. The inventory of sequestration sites needs also identification of major CO 2 point sources and a cost benefit analysis. The potential for CO 2 escape and migration is a deciding factor in screening out unsafe sites. Site capacity should be determined based on in situ conditions and CO 2 properties and behavior. Transforming the geological space into the CO 2 space is an important step along the road map for selection of suitable CO 2 injection sites that allows the identification of safe large capacity sites. An example of application from the Alberta basin is presented.

The influence of compost on the growth of bean plants irrigated with As-contaminated waters and its influence on the mobility of As in the soils and the uptake of As (as NaAs(III)O2) by plant components was studied at various compost application rates (3·10(4) and 6·10(4) kg ha(-1)) and at three As concentrations (1, 2 and 3 mg kg(-1)). The biomass and As and P concentrations of the roots, shoots and beans were determined at harvest time, as well as the chlorophyll content of the leaves and nonspecific and specifically bound As in the soil. The bean plants exposed to As showed typical phytotoxicity symptoms; no plants however died over the study. The biomass of the bean plants increased with the increasing amounts of compost added to the soil, attributed to the phytonutritive capacity of compost. Biomass decreased with increasing As concentrations, however, the reduction in the biomass was significantly lower with the addition of compost, indicating that the As phytotoxicity was alleviated by the compost. For the same As concentration, the As content of the roots, shoots and beans decreased with increasing compost added compared to the Control. This is due to partial immobilization of the As by the organic functional groups on the compost, either directly or through cation bridging. Most of the As adsorbed by the bean plants accumulated in the roots, while a scant allocation of As occurred in the beans. Hence, the addition of compost to soils could be used as an effective means to limit As accumulation in crops from As-contaminated waters.

Abstract Eradicating poverty and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are core issues of global sustainable development goals (SDGs), and China is struggling in realizing these targets. The poverty reduction that leads to popualtion structure and lifestyle changes would have an impact on GHG emission changes. However, few studies have assessed the historical and future impacts of the poverty allevation on China's emissions. Here by linking Chinese Multi-Regional Input Output (MRIO) database to the global MRIO database EXIOBASE, and using provincial household consumption data, we identified the distribution of Chinese household greenhouse gas footprints (HGFs) by income groups in 2015 at the national and provinical levels. Moreover, we focused on the historical impact of poverty alleviation on HGFs during 2010–2015, and developed four scenarios to project future HGFs changes due to poverty alleviation by 2030. We find that eradicating extreme poverty in the secanrio S2, i.e., bringing people to an income above $1.9 daily, does not cause a large emission impact with current technological level. However, lifting people from a higher poverty line of $5.5 per day in the sceanrio S4 results in a 1.6% increase in emissions compared with the scenario S1 without any poverty reduction goals. Furthermore, realizing a higher poverty reduction target will result in an increase of emissions contribution from internatioanl supply chains due to the differences in consumption patterns among different income groups. Our study highlights the conflict between the high poverty alleviaition goal and emission reduciton in China, and reminds us of the need to make more technological efforts for avoiding the large emissions embodied in international supply chains.

Abstract In order to further reduce the impact of climate fluctuations on the typical meteorological year (TMY) database, this paper introduces an ensemble empirical model decomposition method to extract the periodic fluctuation and random fluctuation data from outdoor climate data separately, and to construct a comprehensive description parameter that eliminates the influence of random fluctuation data. An innovative TMY based on the comprehensive description parameter was developed in six selected cities of different climate zones in China. Compared with the existing Chinese TMY development method and outdoor design parameters, it is found that the typical meteorological months (TMMs) of each city and the outdoor design parameters from the improved TMY database have changed to a certain extent. Through the correlation analysis between improved TMY database and the cumulative long-average meteorological data, it reveals that the improved TMY can better describe the local average climatic characteristics. Finally, this paper discusses the impact of the improved TMY on the building heat loss index and outdoor thermal comfort in different building shapes. The results demonstrate that the energy demand and outdoor thermal comfort analysis based on the improved TMY are closer to long-term averaged outdoor climate, and the calculation deviations compared with conventional method are reduced by 1.18%–21.08% and 53.42%–76.82% respectively. This research will refine outdoor climate data for building design and analysis.

Abstract The global steel production has been growing for the last 50 years, from 200 Mt in 1950s to 1 240 Mt in 2006. Iron and steel making industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries, with an annual energy consumption of about 24 EJ, 5% of the world's total energy consumption. The steel industry accounts for 3%–4% of total world greenhouse gas emissions. Enhancing energy efficiency and employing energy saving/recovering technologies such as coke dry quechning (CDQ) and top pressure recovery turbine (TRT) can be short-term approaches to the steel industry to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The long-term approaches to achieving a significant reduction in CO2 emissions from the steel industry would be through developing and applying CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making, and through increasing use of renewable energy for iron and steel making. Thus, an overview of new CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making was made.