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The drought prone North-West Bangladesh is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly because of less water availability in the dry period and high water requirement for crop production. Improved understanding of recent changes in crop water demand in the dry season is important for the water resources management in the region. A study was carried out to determine the potential impacts of recent climate change during last three decades on trends of water requirements of Boro rice. The reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo), potential crop water requirement (∑ETC), effective rainfall during the crop growing period (ER), potential irrigation requirement for crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC − ER) and net irrigation requirement of Boro rice were estimated using observed daily climate data in the CropWat model for the period of 1980 to 2013 for four North-West districts. Significant decreasing trends of ETo were observed in most of the dry months due to increasing relative humidity and decreasing wind-speed and sun-shine hours. The results showed decreasing trends of potential crop water requirement, i.e. the total crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC), of Boro rice due to decreasing reference crop evapotranspiration and shorter crop growing periods. The variations in trends of potential irrigation requirement for crop evapotranspiration (∑ETC − ER) found among different districts, are mainly linked to variations in trends of changes in effective rainfall. The net irrigation requirement of Boro rice has decreased, by 11% during the last three decades at an average rate of −4.4 mm year−1, instead of decreasing effective rainfall, mainly because of high rate of decrease of crop evapotranspiration (−5.9 mm year−1). Results indicate that a warming climate does not always result in higher agricultural water use and that climate change can also result in reduced water demands because of changes in humidity, wind-speed and sun-shine hours.

Mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions has become an utmost important global agenda, keeping into consideration the associated environmental hardships. As a result, it is important to unearth the factors which can neutralize carbon emissions to transform the world economy into a low-carbon one. Against this backdrop, this study explores the carbon dioxide neutralizing effects of economic growth, international tourism, clean energy promotion, and technological innovation in the context of five European Union (EU-5) nations during the 1990-2015 period. This study's main contribution is in terms of its approach to test the interaction effect between foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and energy innovation on carbon dioxide emissions. The econometric analysis chronologically involves the employment of unit root, cointegration, causality, and regression methods. Overall, the findings support the inverted-U-shaped economic growth-carbon dioxide emissions nexus to verify the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Besides, the Pollution Haven Hypothesis in the context of the selected panel is also verified as higher FDI inflows are seen to boost the carbon dioxide emission levels. The results also confirm that energy innovation moderates the harmful effect of air transport (a proxy for international tourism) on carbon dioxide emissions during the developing stage of the tourism industry. On the other hand, renewable energy promotion is found to curb carbon dioxide emissions. These findings suggest that the European governments need to enhance investments in their respective renewable energy sectors and simultaneously ensure the development of clean industries, which can collectively help these nations become carbon-neutral in the future.

One of the most fascinating characteristics of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is the retrieved obtainment of outstanding photovoltaic (PV) performances withstanding important device configuration variations. Here we have analyzed CH3NH3PbI3-xClx in planar or in mesostructured (MS) configurations, employing both titania and alumina scaffolds, fully infiltrated with perovskite material or presenting an overstanding layer. The use of the MS scaffold induces to the perovskite different structural properties, in terms of grain size, preferential orientation, and unit cell volume, in comparison to the ones of the material grown with no constraints, as we have found out by X-ray diffraction analyses. We have studied the effect of the PSC configuration on photoinduced absorption and time-resolved photoluminescence, complementary techniques that allow studying charge photogeneration and recombination. We have estimated electron diffusion length in the considered configurations observing a decrease when the material is confined in the MS scaffold with respect to a planar architecture. However, the presence of perovskite overlayer allows an overall recovering of long diffusion lengths explaining the record PV performances obtained with a device configuration bearing both the mesostructure and a perovskite overlayer. Our results suggest that performance in devices with perovskite overlayer is mainly ruled by the overlayer, whereas the mesoporous layer influences the contact properties.

This deliverable presents the final design of the ASTEP system specifically tailored for both end-users, including the requirements of the different components integrated in the system. This includes the final system design and the requirements of the piping, heat transfer fluid and ancillary systems, sensors, pumps, heat exchangers and cooling lines. The accumulator will be installed in series with solar concentrator for both end-users. This configuration has been selected due to its easier control and lower actuation and measuring costs. Therminol 59 is selected as the HTF. First, synthetic oils have been selected instead of pressurized water or direct steam generation due to its application flexibility. Then, Therminol 59 was selected thanks to its higher pumpability at low temperatures, especially important for AMTP case. Regarding the piping, DN20 tubes are selected for most lines (except those within the SunDial concentrator affected by the HTF recirculation, which should be DN50) in order to limit pressure drop. This design would limit total line pressure drop to 2 bar. In what refers to the piping insulation, 101.6 mm fiberglass insulation is selected to limit heat losses. Heat losses might still be relatively high (2 kW) due to the small size of the prototype, but cost limitations led to this choice both in terms of material and thickness. The components to fill and drain the system are designed together with the expansion vessel. A pump with a manifold is used to initially fill the system or to drain it completely. The expansion vessel is sized to ensure pressure limitations in the system. The cooling circuit for MAN is also designed. This cooling is based on two absorption chillers (Purix A25 units), 3.1 kW each. The inertia tank sizing, the pumps and the sensors required for its control are detailed in the deliverable. The temperatures, pressures, and mass flows of the different sensors, valves, pumps and heat exchangers have been considered in order to select these systems. This selection has always been done with cost perspective since these elements might be relatively expensive for the system size. Finally, the requirements of the chiller-water line are given in terms of the required elements, including the absorption and compressor chillers to be used. This configuration with absorption chiller and compression chiller in series has been selected since no absorption chillers have been found for the system size. Nevertheless, a large application of ASTEP system would lead to larger absorption chillers directly fed by synthetic oil with lower cooling temperatures. Therefore, no compression chiller in series would be necessary and higher COP would be achieved.

In the climate change context, the severity and duration of drought periods are expected to increase. Forests are known to be extremely sensitive to climate change, especially in the Mediterranean Basin, and particularly in Tunisia, where climate is characterized by dry hot summers which will intensify and prolong due to climate change effects. A better understanding of the mechanisms allowing plants to survive during prolonged drought would help to anticipate expected changes. The present study aimed to analyze the effect of extremely dry years on the mortality and decline of cork oak forests in northwest Tunisia during the 1988–1995 period. Extreme drought years with significant effects on tree growth were registered. Cork oak mortality was recorded for up to 63,622 trees. The study area was largely influenced by the frequency of prolonged drought periods, especially from 1988 to 1995.

Escalating energy costs are an increasing concern for South Asian farmers growing rice and wheat in rotation. Millions of people in the IGP (Indo-Gangetic Plains) depend on this cropping system for food and income security. CT (conservation tillage) practices, including mechanical BP (bed planting), PTOS (power-tiller operated seeding), and ST (strip tillage), are advocated by donors and development organizations as profitable, high yielding, and energy-efficient alternatives to TT (traditional tillage). However, most studies on the EUE (energy input use efficiency) of CT originate from researcher-controlled and on-station experiments. Comparatively little information is available on the EUE of CT practices as farmers apply them in their own fields, and under their own management decisions. This research responds to this gap, and analyzes EUE of each of these three CT options, compared to TT, by surveying 328 rice-wheat farmers in north-western Bangladesh. Concentrating on wheat production, we employed a non-parametric benchmarking technique involving slack-based measures of technical efficiency, along with a fractional regression model to identify and compute the wasteful use of energy. PTOS achieved the highest EUE score (0.92), followed closely by BP and ST (both 0.91), whereas TT (0.68) was significantly (p <0.001) different and lower than the CT practices.

Biochar has potentials for soil fertility improvement, climate change mitigation and environmental reclamation, and charred biomass can be deliberately incorporated into soil for long-term carbon stabilization and soil amendment. Many different methods have been used for biochar production ranging from laboratory to industrial scales. However, in countryside of developing countries, biomass is generally used for cooking but not charred. Biochar production techniques at farmer scale have remained poorly developed. We developed and tested biochar production kilns for farmers with a dimension of 50.8 cm × 38.1 cm (height × diameter), using three different setups for optimizing oxygen (O2) limitation and syngas circulation: airtight with no syngas circulation (Model I), semi-airtight with external syngas circulation (Model II) and semi-airtight with internal syngas circulation (Model III). A comparative assessment of these biochar production kiln models was made considering biochar pyrolysis time, fuel to biomass ratio, biochar to feedstock ratio and thermogravimetric index (TGI). Among the models, the best quality biochar (TGI = 0.15) was obtained from Model I kiln taking the longest time for pyrolysis (12.5 h) and the highest amount of fuel wood (1.22 kg kg-1 biomass). Model III kiln produced comparatively good quality biochar (TGI = 0.11), but with less fuel wood requirement (0.33 kg kg-1 biomass) and shorter pyrolysis time (8.5 h). We also tested Model III kiln in a three times larger size under two situations (steel kiln and pit kiln). The biochar to feedstock ratio (0.38) and quality (TGI = 0.14) increased slightly for the larger kilns. Quality of biochar was found to be mainly related to pyrolysis time. The costs for the biochar stove and pit kiln were US$ 65-77, while it was US$ 154 for the large size steel kiln. Model III kiln can potentially be used for both cooking and biochar production at farmer scale.