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ON 16 NOVEMBER 2000, the final report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was launched in London, in the presence of South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela. This represented a remarkable milestone in the history of dam policy and politics. During its two-year existence, WCD had conducted the most extensive review of research and evidence regarding the planning, impacts, and management of large dams. It had engaged with numerous stakeholders around the globe. It also made comprehensive recommendations about how to improve dam planning and management.

The EU carbon price lies well below estimates of the social cost of carbon and “target-consistent” carbon prices needed to deliver ambitious targets such as the 40% reduction target for 2030. In light of this, the UK introduced a carbon price floor (CPF) for its electricity sector in 2013 and the new Dutch Government has recently made a similar commitment, while successive French Governments have called for an EU-wide CPF. This paper analyzes the impacts and design of a power-sector CPF, both at the EU and national level, using a political-economy approach. We find a good case for introducing such a price-based instrument into the EU ETS. We suggest that a CPF should be designed to “top up” the EUA price to €25-30/tCO2, rising annually at 3-5% above inflation, at least until 2030. We argue that the new EU Market Stability Reserve enhances the value of a CPF in terms of delivering climate benefits, and discuss the potential for a regional CPF in North-West Europe. We also review international policy experience with price floors (and ceilings).

Electricity is an undisputed factor supporting human development, while further supporting social wellbeing and fostering economic growth of modern societies. Therefore, the electricity market provides a vivid policy-making arena for the EU regulators, where on-going structural reforms are promoted with the aim to encapsulate and accommodate sustainability aspects. Notably, the EU Member States have adopted the strategic roadmap “Europe 2020” toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption by 20 %, and generating 20 % of energy from renewable sources. However, our research highlights that strategies trying to balance sustainable electricity supply with demand often neglect the societal pricing acceptability of the electricity provided to consumers. Thus far, existing literature focuses on electricity pricing policies that fail to capture the dynamics that have to govern realistic pricing schema in the electricity sector. To that end, this study elaborates the system dynamics (SD) methodological approach to embrace the potential dominant factors within a sustainable electricity system. The proposed SD framework could assist public and private stakeholders in determining a rational electricity pricing policy within a sustainability context. Finally, policy-making interventions are discussed in order to provide managerial insights for the decision-makers.

Since a superconductor has no resistance below a certain temperature and can therefore save a large amount of energy dissipated, it is a 'green' material by saving energy loss and hence reducing carbon emissions. Recently the massive manufacture of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) materials has enabled superconductivity to become a preferred candidate to help generation and transportation of cleaner energy. One of the most promising applications of superconductors is Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage (SMES) systems, which are becoming the enabling engine for improving the capacity, efficiency, and reliability of the electric system. SMES systems store energy in the magnetic field created by the flow of direct current in a superconducting coil. SMES systems have many advantages compared to other energy storage systems: high cyclic efficiency, fast response time, deep discharge and recharge ability, and a good balance between power density and energy density. Based on these advantages, SMES systems will play an indispensable role in improving power qualities, integrating renewable energy sources and energizing transportation systems. This thesis describes an intensive study of superconducting pancake coils wound using second-generation(2G) HTS materials and their application in SMES systems. The specific contribution of this thesis includes an innovative design of the SMES system, an easily calculated, but theoretically advanced numerical model to analyse the system, extensive experiments to validate the design and model, and a complete demonstration experiment of the prototype SMES system. This thesis begins with literature review which includes the introduction of the background theory of superconductivity and development of SMES systems. Following the literature review is the theoretical work. A prototype SMES system design, which provides the maximum stored energy for a particular length of conductors, has been investigated. Furthermore, a new numerical model, which can predict all necessary operation parameters, including the critical current and AC losses of the system, is presented. This model has been extended to analyse superconducting coils in different situations as well. To validate the theoretical design and model, several superconducting coils, which are essential parts of the prototype SMES system, together with an experimental measurement set-up have been built. The coils have been energized to test their energy storage capability. The operation parameters including the critical current and AC losses have been measured. The results are consistent with the theoretical predictions. Finally the control system is developed and studied. A power electronics control circuit of the prototype SMES system has been designed and simulated. This control circuit can energize or discharge the SMES system dynamically and robustly. During a voltage sag compensation experiment, this SMES prototype monitored the power system and successfully compensated the voltage sag when required. By investigating the process of building a complete system from the initial design to the final experiment, the concept of a prototype SMES system using newly available 2G HTS tapes was validated. This prototype SMES system is the first step towards the implementation of future indsutrial SMES systems with bigger capacities, and the knowledge obtained through this research provides a comprehensive overview of the design of complete SMES systems. The full text of this thesis is not available due to ongoing discussions regarding publication

ABSTRACT Tire selection has an important impact on the operational costs of heavy-goods vehicles (HGVs). HGV tires are designed on a tradeoff between wear resistance, rolling resistance, and adhesion (skid resistance). High wear resistance tires (high mileage) are replaced less often but use more fuel during operation, and vice versa for low rolling resistance tires. Presently, finding the optimal tire to minimize replacement costs and fuel consumption (greenhouse gas emissions) is challenging due to the difficulty in predicting tire wear for a given operation, since its rate varies with different vehicle configurations (e.g., load, vehicle length, number of axles, type of axle, etc.) and road types (e.g., motorways/highways, minor roads, urban roads, etc.). This article presents a novel empirical tire-wear model that can be used to predict the wear for multi-axle vehicles based on route data and a vehicle model. The first part of the article presents the analytical and experimental development of the model. The second part presents the experimental validation of the model based on 10 months of in-service data totaling 37,000 km of operation. The model predicts tire tread depth within 8% (average error of 2%).

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has once again made the impacts of natural disasters a hot topic in academia. The environmental impacts of natural disasters, however, remain unsettled in the existing literature. This study aims to investigate the impact of natural disasters on CO2 emissions. For this purpose, we employ a panel dataset covering 138 countries over the period 1990-2018 and two dynamic panel estimation methods. Then, considering the differences in CO2 emissions across various countries, we run a panel quantile regression to examine the asymmetry in the nexus between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. We also discuss the mediating effects of energy consumption between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. After conducting a series of robustness checks, we confirm that our results are stable and convincing. The empirical results indicate that natural disasters significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, the impact of natural disasters on CO2 emissions is asymmetric across different quantiles of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the technology level serves as an important moderating factor between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. The mediating effect results reveal that natural disasters not only directly reduce CO2 emissions but also indirectly promote carbon reduction by restraining energy consumption. Finally, several policy implications are provided to reduce CO2 emissions and the damage caused by natural disasters.

SummaryThis article seeks to advance the understanding of the relationship between industrial ecology (IE) and business model innovation for sustainability as a means and driver of new value creation and competitive advantage by expanding the understanding of industrial symbiosis (IS) and internal symbiosis. This is explored through the case study of British Sugar, which, at the time of writing, is the UK's largest sugar producer by market share. Over the past three decades, the company has systematically sought opportunities to turn waste streams and emissions from their core production processes into useful and positive inputs to new product lines. Their core business is still sugar, but the business model has evolved to offer a broad range of additional synergistic and profitable product lines, including animal feed, electricity, tomatoes, and bioethanol. The research explores the temporal dimension of dynamic business model innovation, framing it in the context of a continuous evolutionary process rather than a discrete design activity. The case will be of interest as an additional contribution to the growing literature on IS; in offering an approach for linking the themes of IE literature and sustainable business model innovation more concretely in research and practice; and, by presenting the case as an evolutionary innovation process, the article furthers the emerging literature on business model innovation for sustainability.

AbstractMass and energy fluxes were measured over a field of Agave tequilana in Mexico using eddy covariance (EC) methodology. Data were gathered over 252 d, including the transition from wet to dry periods. Net ecosystem exchanges (FN,EC) displayed a crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) rhythm that alternated from CO2 sink at night to CO2 source during the day, and partitioned canopy fluxes (FA,EC) showed a characteristic four‐phase CO2 exchange pattern. Results were cross‐validated against diel changes in titratable acidity, leaf‐unfurling rates, energy exchange fluxes and reported biomass yields. Projected carbon balance (g C m−2 year−1, mean ± 95% confidence interval) indicated the site was a net sink of −333 ± 24, of which contributions from soil respiration were +692 ± 7, and FA,EC was −1025 ± 25. EC estimated biomass yield was 20.1 Mg (dry) ha−1 year−1. Average integrated daily FA,EC was −234 ± 5 mmol CO2 m−2 d−1 and persisted almost unchanged after 70 d of drought conditions. Regression analyses were performed on the EC data to identify the best environmental predictors of FA. Results suggest that the carbon acquisition strategy of Agave offers productivity and drought resilience advantages over conventional semi‐arid C3 and C4 bioenergy candidates.