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The residential sector accounts for one-fifth of global energy consumption, resulting from the requirements to heat, cool, and light residential dwellings. It is therefore not surprising that energy efficiency in the residential market has gained importance in recent years. In this paper, we examine awareness, literacy and behavior of households with respect to their residential energy expenditures. Using a detailed survey of 1721 Dutch households, we measure the extent to which consumers are aware of their energy consumption and whether they have taken measures to reduce their energy costs. Our results show that "energy literacy" and awareness among respondents is low: just 56% of the respondents are aware of their monthly charges for energy consumption, and 40% do not appropriately evaluate investment decisions in energy efficient equipment. We document that demographics and consumer attitudes towards energy conservation, but not energy literacy and awareness, have direct effects on behavior regarding heating and cooling of the home. The impact of a moderating factor, measured by thermostat settings, ultimately results in strong variation in the energy consumption of private consumers. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.

AbstractProjections show that biomass will remain important for reaching future EU renewable energy targets. In addition to using domestic biomass, European bioenergy markets will also partly rely on imports of biomass, in particular in trade‐oriented EU member states like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark. There has been a lot of debate on the sustainability of (imported) biomass and how policy should deal with this. In this research, therefore, we defined long‐term strategies for sustainable biomass imports in European bioenergy markets. We used the input of different stakeholders in our approach through focus‐group discussions and a global survey, focusing on the following aspects: key principles of sustainable biomass trade, risks and opportunities of biomass trade, both for import regions (EU countries) and for sourcing regions, and practical barriers for trade. Overall we conclude that policies should be stable and consistent within a long‐term vision. An overall sustainability assurance framework of biomass production and use is key, but should ultimately apply to all end uses of biomass. Furthermore, the mobilization of biomass should be supported, as well as commoditization, considering the large diversity of biomass. Side impacts of biomass use should be monitored. Reducing investors’ risk perception is crucial for future developments in the biobased economy, and a clear policy to phase out fossil fuels, e.g. through a carbon tax, needs to be implemented. The results of this research are of interest for policy makers when deciding on long‐term strategies concerning sustainable bioenergy markets. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Although mature technologies at competitive prices are largely available, solar thermal is not yet playing the important role it deserves in the reduction of buildings fossil energy consumption. The generally low architectural quality characterizing existing building integrations of solar thermal systems pinpoints the lack of design as one major reason for the low spread of the technology. As confirmed by the example of photovoltaics, the improvement of the architectural quality of building integrated systems can increase the use of a solar technology even more than price and technique. This thesis investigates the possible ways to enhance the architectural quality of building integrated solar thermal systems, and focuses on integration into façade, where the formal constraints are major and have most impact. The architectural integration problematic is structured into functional, constructive and formal issues, so that integration criteria are given for each architectural category. As the functional and constructive criteria are already recognized by the scientific community, the thesis concentrates on the definition of the formal ones, yet underestimated or misunderstood. The results of a large European survey over architects and engineers perception of building integration quality are presented, showing that for architects formal issues are not a matter of personal taste, but that they relate to professional competences, and consequently can be described. The solar system characteristics having an impact on the formal quality of the integration are identified (formal characteristics), the related integration criteria are assessed, and finally integration guidelines to support architect integration design work are given. The limits imposed by the collectors available in the market are pointed out, showing that the lack of appropriate products is nowadays the main barrier to BIST (Building Integrated Solar Thermal) architectural quality. A methodology for the development of new solar thermal collectors systems responding at the same time to energy production needs and building integration requirements is defined. The importance to ensure, within the design team, the due professional competences in both these fields is stressed. Three progressive levels of system "integrability" are defined in the path leading to the concept of "active envelope systems" and the main role of facade manufacturers is highlighted. The methodology is applied to unglazed and glazed flat plate systems, and new façade system designs are proposed that show the relevance of the proposed approach.

The Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) was an international, multiplatform field campaign to measure long-range transport of air pollution from South and Southeast Asia toward the Indian Ocean during the dry monsoon season in January to March 1999. Surprisingly high pollution levels were observed over the entire northern Indian Ocean toward the Intertropical Convergence Zone at about 6°S. We show that agricultural burning and especially biofuel use enhance carbon monoxide concentrations. Fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning cause a high aerosol loading. The growing pollution in this region gives rise to extensive air quality degradation with local, regional, and global implications, including a reduction of the oxidizing power of the atmosphere.

Natural gas is defined as a combustible mixture of hydrocarbons coming from ground deposits and it is mainly used as a source of energy for burners and motors. Its consumption is increasing worldwide, as this represents a cheap and abundant source of energy, while releasing less CO2 emissions than other fossil fuels, in addition to low emissions of particulates. The diversification of the supply sources of gas and the increase of international trading through pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments makes the gas quality vary more than before, which is a rising challenge for the natural gas industry, as currently the vast majority of gas appliances and motors are unable to adapt to changes in gas quality. This will even worsen in the upcoming years with the multiplication of biogas sources and power-to-gas systems that will be added to the pipeline networks. In order to accomodate the appliances to changes in gas quality, compact and low cost natural gas quality transducers have to be developped for the natural gas industry. The present Thesis aimed at investigating the existing methods to determine natural gas quality for combustion, focusing on the determination of the Wobbe Index (WI), which is a key parameter to set up the air-fuel ratio of the combustion in burners and motors, and to qualify a new type of dynamic viscosity transducer developped at Laboratoire de Production Microtechnique (LPM) of EPFL for the determination of the combustion properties. Inference transducers are a new kind of transducers that allow determining the combustion parameters of the gas by relating to fundamental thermo-physical parameters, and not through the determination of the concentration of the gas constituents, as in gas chromatographs and spectrometers. Here, the dynamic viscosity is chosen as the most promising thermo-physical property of a natural gas to relate to the WI and the Higher Heating Value (HHV). The viscometer takes measurements proportional to the resistance to flow of a gas through a capillary under the action of pulses of heat, and it can be therefore be described as a thermal pumping gas viscometer. A mathematical model and a finite element model (FEM) are used to predict the behavior of the system and for thermal optimization, which are combined by a thermal characterization of the system. The miniature heater used to generate the heat pulses inside the viscometer is a key element of the transducer, and after reviewing potential technologies, the design choices are reported and the fabrication process is exposed, followed by a mechanical and thermal characterization. In order to determine and validate the conversion of the WI from the dynamic viscosity, theoretical relations are analyzed and empirical characterizations are done with a test and calibration setup allowing to create given mixes of gases. Finally, the degradation of the transducer to contaminants of natural gas is investigated, and the analysis is focused to the characterization of the corrosion by the sulfur compounds of natural gas. Test vehicles are developed to study the effect of sulfur corrosion on metallic parts, electronic substrates, silicone adhesives and wirebonds materials, and experiments are held with the dedicated test setups developed at LPM of EPFL.

Species distribution models (SDMs) provide realistic scenarios to explain the influence of bioclimatic variables on plant pathogen distribution. Diplodia sapinea is most harmful to plantations of both exotic and native pine species in Italy, causing economic consequences expecially to edible seed production. In this study, we developed maximum entropy models for D. sapinea in Italy to reach the following goals: (i) to carry out the pathogen's first geographical distribution analysis in Italy and determine which ecogeographical variables (EGVs) may influence its outbreaks; (ii) to detect the effect of climate change on the potential occurrence of disease outbreaks by 2050 and 2070. We used Maxent ver. 3.4.0 to develop SDMs. We used six global climate models (BCC-CSM1-1, CCSM4, GISS-E2-R, MIROC5, HadGEM2-ES and MPI-ESM-LR) for two representative concentration pathways (4.5 and 8.5) and two time projections (2050 and 2070) to detect future climate projections of D. sapinea. The most important EGVs influencing outbreaks were land cover, altitude, mean temperature of driest and wettest quarter, precipitation of wettest quarter, precipitation seasonality and minimum temperature of coldest month. The distribution of D. sapinea mostly expanded in central and southern Italy and shifted in altitude upwards on average by ca. 93m a.s.l. Moreover the fungus expanded the range where disease outbreaks may be recorded in response to an increase in the mean temperature of wettest and driest quarter by ca. 1.9 C and 5.8 C, respectively in all climate change scenarios. Precipitation of wettest quarter did not differ between current and any of future models. Under different climate change scenarios D. sapinea's disease outbreaks will be likely to affect larger areas of pine forests in the country, probably causing heavy effects on the dynamics and evolution of these stands or perhaps constraining their survival.

Roundtables for sustainable beef have evolved in national contexts as well as at the global level as a multi-stakeholder process to address sustainability concerns in the cattle sector. However, due to their relatively recent inception, the literature on the beef roundtables is extremely limited and very little scholarly work has traced their process or impact. We used semi-structured interviews with key informants to examine the governance, actions, and potential impacts of the roundtables for sustainable beef, and identified opportunities and challenges for achieving greater sustainability impact. We found that the beef roundtables are in different stages of development and implementation and that they have diverse approaches based on their geographic contexts. However, they have universally adopted a model of sector-wide continuous improvement, in contrast to roundtables for other commodities, which have in many cases adopted formal certification programs. Activities by the roundtables for sustainable beef have variously included working towards definitions of sustainable beef; setting sustainability principles and criteria; and creating working groups to address specific aspects of sustainability (e.g., verification, deforestation). Our interviews identified opportunities to expand the roundtables’ roles, activities, and sustainability impacts. This study provides a benchmark of the roundtables’ efforts to date, and generates hypotheses and ideas for how they could evolve in the future.

This article is about diffusion processes behind the innovation of sub-national energy policy measures in a federal system. Typically for the federal political system in Switzerland, the elements of the energy policy field are shaped by the principle of subsidiarity. The aim is that cantons promote innovative problem solutions and regionally adapted implementation. For this reason, policy differences between cantons are large and create a need for coordination. More concretely, I will analyze the impact of inter-cantonal institutions on different innovations in the field of energy policy. The research question is approached with an event history analysis on three different innovative measures in the Swiss cantons from 1990 to 2007. A more comprehensive picture of diffusion in one policy field is drawn with this approach. The main contribution of this paper is the finding that intergovernmental institutions promote diffusion in one policy field only for measures with certain characteristics. The internal determinants are therefore not a sufficient explanation.