• Energy Research
• Open Access close
• FR close
• DE close
• NL close
• CD close

Using data from Eurobarometer 83.4, this study combines the two branches of research that address climate-related and biodiversity-related opinions and actions of individuals in the EU. The literature shows that the differences between climate-related and biodiversity-related policies correspond, at an individual level, to a person's basic attitudes towards environmental protection and towards nature protection, respectively. The contribution of this study is to demonstrate how these attitudes can influence behavior that has environmental repercussions for both issues, such as food consumption practices. The analysis focused on two Eurobarometer questions about buying local and seasonal food (to fight climate change) and about buying organic and local food (to protect biodiversity and nature). The results of two multinomial regression analyses, separately in Northwestern European countries and Eastern and Southern European countries, demonstrated that climate-related and biodiversity-related attitudes were, independent of each other, related to the adoption of these purchase behaviors. The results may support Europe's new Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy and indicate that improving food consumption practices can enable individuals to better play their part in fighting climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, which opens up interesting new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.

AbstractIt is not known whether dietary guidelines proposing a limited intake of animal protein are compatible with the adoption of circular food systems. Using a resource-allocation model, we compared the effects of circularity on the supply of animal-source nutrients in Europe with the nutritional requirements of the EAT-Lancet reference diet. We found the two to be compatible in terms of total animal-source proteins but not specific animal-source foods; in particular, the EAT-Lancet guidelines recommend larger quantities of poultry meat over beef and pork, while a circular food system produces mainly milk, dairy-beef and pork. Compared with the EAT-Lancet reference diet, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by up to 31% and arable land use reduced by up to 42%. Careful consideration of the feasible substitutability between animal-source foods is needed to define potential roles of animal products in circular human diets.

Abstract Whereas temporal variability of plant phenology in response to climate change has already been well studied, the spatial variability of phenology is not well understood. Given that phenological shifts may affect the magnitude of biotic interactions, there is a need to investigate how the variability in environmental factors relates to the spatial variability in herbaceous species’ phenology by at the same time considering their functional traits to predict their general and species-specific responses to future climate change. In this project, we analysed phenology records of 148 herbaceous species, which were observed for a single year by the PhenObs network in 15 botanical gardens. For each species, we characterised the spatial variability in six different phenological stages across gardens. We used boosted regression trees to link these variabilities in phenology to the variability in environmental parameters (temperature, latitude, and local habitat conditions) as well as species traits (seed mass, vegetative height, specific leaf area, and temporal niche) hypothesised to be related to phenology variability. We found that spatial variability in the phenology of herbaceous species was mainly driven by the variability in temperature but also photoperiod was an important driving factor for some phenological stages. In addition, we found that early-flowering and less competitive species indicated by small specific leaf area and vegetative height were more variable in their phenology. Our findings contribute to the field of phenology by showing that besides temperature, photoperiod and functional traits are important to be included when spatial variability of herbaceous species is investigated.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) represent a large class of persistent organic pollutants in an environment of special concern because they have carcinogenic and mutagenic activity. In this paper, we focus on and discuss the effect of different parameters, for instance, initial concentration of Anthracene, temperature, and light intensity, on the degradation rate. These parameters were adjusted at pH 6.8 in the presence of the semiconductor materials (TiO2) as photocatalysts over UV light. The main product of Anthracene photodegradation is 9,10-Anthraquinone which isidentified and compared with the standard compound by GC-MS. Our results indicate that the optimum conditions for the best rate of degradation are 25 ppm concentration of Anthracene, regulating the reaction vessel at 308.15 K and 2.5 mW/cm2of light intensity at 175 mg/100 mL of titanium dioxide (P25).

AbstractWind effects in arid locations cause sand abrasion on optical surfaces and protective systems. Sand abrasion is identified as a large contributor to overall power plant efficiency loss. It is reflected in recent SolarPACES conferences that the awareness for the topic of sand abrasion is rising [1–3]. Sustainability is mandatory for next generation's CSP fields and in this sense all effort is put into lowering cost of structure, providing reliability and lowering cost of maintenance. In this study, we will report on accelerated lifetime modeling with a multi-layer model, combining aerodynamic wind tunnel data with aging under sand storm conditions.

Abstract In the micrometeorology community, it is well known that the turbulent fluxes measured with eddy covariance (EC) systems do not usually equal the available energy. Hence, qualitative knowledge of the impact of different vegetation types, and climatic variables on this ‘nonclosure’ is essential. This study analyzed a unique database of EC flux measurements covering 8 growing seasons of 3 crops (maize, wheat, and rapeseed) cultivated over two close agricultural sites (FR-Lam and FR-Aur) in southwestern France. For data analysis, some dry and wet cropping seasons of the same crop type were selected; then, their phenological stages were identified to investigate their effect on the energy balance closure (EBC), and flux partitioning. The results showed that the systematic effect of each site on the EBC was stronger than the influence of crop type and stage, as EBC was generally higher at FR-Aur (82%) than at FR-Lam (67%), even for the same crop type. The assessed effect of rainfall, and phenological stages on energy partitioning revealed that during the wet seasons, over 42% of the net radiation (Rn) was accounted for by the latent heat flux (LE), which was 9% higher than the recorded LE in the dry year during the active vegetation period. Similarly, the ground heat flux (G) was observed to be very sensitive to vegetation; G accounted for 30% of Rn when vegetation was low, whereas at the peak of vegetation, it fell below 16% due to canopy shading. Closure was also assessed under various atmospheric stability conditions and wind sectors, and it was observed to be higher under unstable conditions, and in prevailing wind directions. Analysis of the sensible heat advection (AH) revealed that AH accounts for more than half of the imbalance at both sites.

Alcoholic fatty liver results from an impaired fatty acid catabolism due to blockade of PPARalpha and increased lipogenesis due to activation of sterol regulatory element-binding protein (SREBP)-1c. Because both oxidized fats (OF) and conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) have been demonstrated in rats to activate hepatic PPARalpha, we tested the hypothesis that these fats are able to prevent ethanol-induced triacylglycerol accumulation in the liver by upregulation of PPARalpha-responsive genes. Forty-eight male rats were assigned to 6 groups and fed isocaloric liquid diets containing either sunflower oil (SFO) as a control fat, OF prepared by heating of SFO, or CLA, in the presence and absence of ethanol, for 4 wk. Administration of ethanol lowered mRNA concentrations of PPARalpha and the PPARalpha-responsive genes medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, long chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, acyl-CoA oxidase, carnitine palmitoyl-CoA transferase I, and cytochrome P450 4A1 and increased triacylglycerol concentrations in the liver (P < 0.05). OF increased hepatic mRNA concentrations of PPARalpha-responsive genes and lowered hepatic triacylglycerol concentrations compared with SFO (P < 0.05) whereas CLA did not. Rats fed OF with ethanol had similar mRNA concentrations of PPARalpha-responsive genes and similar triacylglycerol concentrations in the liver as rats fed SFO or CLA without ethanol. In contrast, hepatic mRNA concentrations of SREBP-1c and fatty acid synthase were not altered by OF or CLA compared with SFO. This study shows that OF prevents an alcohol-induced triacylglycerol accumulation in rats possibly by upregulation of hepatic PPARalpha-responsive genes involved in oxidation of fatty acids, whereas CLA does not exert such an effect.