• Energy Research
• IT close
• NL close
• EU close
• ES close
• IN close
• English close

The presented Report forms Deliverable D6.2 resulted from the realization of Workpackage WP.6.3 titled “Overview of market drivers, fiscal measures and subsidies” in frame of the EU-Project “Geothermal communities – demonstrating the cascaded use of geothermal energy for district heating with small scale RES integration and retrofitting measures” (GEOCOM). The following seven countries were covered by WP6.3 works and this Deliverable D6.2: o Macedonia, o Hungary, o Italy, o Poland, o Romania, o Serbia, o Slovakia. The work was done with the contribution of all GEOCOM Project Partner teams and appointed experts, coordinated, interpreted and summarized by the Mineral and Energy Economy Research Institute of PAS team, WP6 leader. FP7

The most significant thermal water resource in the Carpathian Basin can be found under the territory of the Hungarian-Serbian border, in the Szeged-Morahalom-Subotica triangle. The abstraction for extensive and complex utilization is currently being started on both sides of the border. For the safe and sustainable abstraction, and its international monitoring, it is necessary to determine the hydrogeological-hydrodynamic features of the common thermal water base, and to elaborate a two-phase 4D model of the water base for the mapping of the water resource and its gas content. FP7

The EU has set clear targets regarding energy conservation of buildings and heavily supports activities towards achieving these targets on a European scale. The Green Deal, renovation wave, Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) are some examples of EU's actions. For more than a decade, Energy Performance Certificates provide detailed data about the current energy needs of a building/building unit as well as information about the building construction and systems. A Building Renovation Passport (BRP) has, on a European level lately, been conceived as a tool that can stimulate cost-effective renovation in the form of a long-term basis, step-by-step deep renovation roadmap following defined quality criteria, and outline energy renovation measures that will improve the energy performance of the building. A Digital Building Logbook (DBL) is another tool that can serve as an archive where all building information can be stored and continuously updated. In this way, a full record of the building history will be electronically available with data regarding construction plans and permits, maintenance and system replacement activities, energy and heat consumption and production, etc. Building Renovation Passports and the Digital Building Logbook are tools that can help in achieving energy efficiency in existing buildings and contribute to reaching the EU renovation wave goals. The objective of this report is to investigate how the current EPC schemes best make the link towards the BRP and the DBL to further incentivise and stimulate cost-effective deep energy renovations of buildings across Europe. Three surveys were carried out to collect relevant information about the current status of the EPC data records and to identify stakeholders' potential needs, perceptions, thoughts and expectations, regarding a future connection between the EPC and the BRP or DBL. These surveys were prepared in two forms: using an excel file format circulated via email, and through an online questionnaire. Their completion was carried out by 16 countries. Regarding the EPCs, the state or regional energy agencies are the owner of the EPC data records and make full use of them. Their current main usage is for statistical reasons in the majority of the countries and their access is publicly available in half of the responding countries. Many common data is stored in the EPC database which can be linked with other tools (half of the EPC databases are already linked with another source). Regarding the BRP, a review of existing European schemes showed that successful BRPs have combined the renovation advice with financial support, legal requirements and/or communication campaigns. An important factor of the BRP is that it should be issued by a qualified expert and should provide customised measures for the specific building together with the investment costs per renovation measure(s). The DBL analysis showed that it should provide access to building information and contribute to better decision-making for future interventions as well as operation, use and maintenance records. The building owner/user is proposed to have full access to the logbook and provide/input about energy bills and building plans/construction materials info. An important aspect is that every time the building undergoes intervention works, the DBL should be updated accordingly. The most important barrier is the lack of motivation to update the DBL contents followed by the absence of synergies and consistency with other tools. Another interesting finding is that both BRP and DBL should be fed automatically by EPC data without any user interference. There is a clear possible interconnection between EPC data and BRP and DBL future contents. In addition, BRP can be an instrument to increase the renovation rates and DBLs are necessary for the management of buildings' information. The linkage of EPC data and BRP and DBL can be strengthened by introducing BRP and DBL as voluntary schemes under national incentives and should be fully implemented once they have demonstrated acceptance by the stakeholders.

Acute oral administration of ethanol (3.2g/kg) to rats increased (DOPAC) levels in the caudate nucleus, but had no effect on DOPAC levels in the substantia nigra and frontal cortex and failed to modify dopamine content in any of the above areas. On the other hand, the administration of the same dose of ethanol to rats which had been chronically treated with ethanol (3.2g/kg daily for 60 days), produced a decrease of DA content and a parallel increase of DOPAC levels in all areas studied. In chronically treated rats, 24 hrs after last ethanol administration dopamine levels in the frontal cortex were 60% higher than in controls. The results suggest that ethanol administration causes dopamine release in different brain areas.

The integration of Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) creates challenges for meeting load demand. The lack of on-demand power generation of these VRES effectively threatens energy security. Therefore, storage facilities, especially hydrogen, have been broadly researched for potential implementation in our energy system, enabling on-demand power "generation". This thesis adds to this research by providing a framework on how VRES and long-term storage technologies can be most optimally utilized to ensure weekly or monthly energy security. This framework is explicitly applied to the Netherlands and reviews the opportunities of a VRES dominated future energy system. The framework consists of a VRES generation model and load model and identifies the optimal load coverage using single- and multi-objective genetic algorithms. The VRES generation model is designed for a weekly and monthly timeframe by using 31 years of available weather data (1988-2018), specifically average wind speeds and solar irradiance, for a number of locations in the Netherlands. Using the available weather data, power generation per MW of onshore wind, offshore wind, and solar PV are calculated. Subsequently, this calculated VRES power generation is compared to available real-world VRES power generation data and a correction factor is determined. Applying the correction factor to the more extensive weather data set allows to effectively create a VRES power generation model, based on the weather circumstances as in these 31 years. Additionally, a weekly and monthly 31-year load profile is determined, using available data for load demand in the Netherlands. Thereafter, both a single and multi-objective algorithm is tasked to provide load coverage in two main scenarios at minimum cost. First, load coverage is achieved exclusively utilizing VRES capacity. Secondly, a variety of long-term storage facilities are introduced in combination with VRES capacity to acquire energy security. Furthermore, these two methods for achieving energy security ...

The recent dispositions related to the energy performance of buildings, launched by the European Directives 2002/91/EC and 2010/31/EU, turned attention to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). The aim of this study is to investigate the economic effects of the recent Italian statutory provisions related to energy performance of buildings on listing behaviour. With this aim an hedonic regression analysis is performed, in order to measure the impact of EPC level on listing prices. The study, based on a set of more than 500 housing property asset collected in 2012 from real estate advertisements websites, is focused on the Turin real estate market as a case study. Furthermore this paper contributes to the early limited literature on implication of the impact of EPC level on Italian housing market, representing one of the first systematic evidence about the energy certifications in the housing listing prices. Aestimum, Aestimum 65 (2014)

Climate change has become one of the most urgent challenges facing our planet today. The consequences we are gradually experiencing have been driven by human activity. Specifically, the increase in energy demand, met mainly through the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil derivatives and natural gas, has significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide (CO2), leading to global warming. To address the environmental problems arising from climate change, which we are gradually experiencing, it is clear that the development of the use of renewable energy sources is the key to the transition from fossil fuels to these innovative energy alternatives, in order to achieve zero emissions and contribute to decarbonization. However, the deployment of these clean energies requires the development of systems that guarantee continuous energy production, to overcome interruptions caused by the variability of natural resources like wind, sun, or water. A viable solution to this issue is employing energy storage technologies to correct the mismatch between energy supply and demand. In particular, in the specific case of the use of the sun as a renewable thermal energy source, thermal energy storage (TES) systems are of great interest, since more than half of the energy demanded in industry is thermal energy. Among the different sensible TES media, conventional concrete is emerging as a very attractive option for use as TES due to its low cost, high availability, ease of processing, high specific heat, good mechanical stability at high temperature and excellent operational performance when subjected to thermal cycling. And despite its moderate thermal conductivity, research has shown that incorporating multiple heat exchangers through which the heat transfer fluid (HTF) passes in concrete improves its efficiency, albeit at an increased cost. However, caution should be exercised in the use of concrete as the production of its precursor, Portland cement (PC), is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO2. It is estimated that for every ton of PC produced, approximately one ton of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. For this reason, construction materials must be rethought and one of the lines of research to reduce CO2 emissions is the search for alternative precursors known as supplementary cementitious materials (SCM). SCMs enable the full or partial substitution of PC. Complete replacement of PC leads to the development of alkali-activated materials (AAM), while partial replacements, typically around 70-80%, result in the development of hybrid materials (HM). This Doctoral Thesis involves the fabrication of both alternative cementitious materials, AAM mortars and HM mortars, to investigate their feasibility as TES. Specifically, for both alternatives, the main precursor used as a substitute is blast furnace slag (BFS), an industrial by-product that has proven to be a promising alternative. In the case of the AAM mortar composed of BFS, SLAG, the activation of the precursor is carried out with sodium silicate due to the excellent mechanical properties of the final cementitious material. Nevertheless, the use of solutions makes the workability of these systems difficult, so HM with BFS (HSLAG) are also manufactured, which hydrate in the presence of water. HM mortars are composed of almost 80% BFS, about 20% PC and 5% sodium sulphate to promote the alkaline medium necessary for BFS activation. After verifying through a life cycle analysis (LCA) that alternative mortars offer benefits in terms of carbon footprint and water footprint, as well as continuing to manufacture alternatives focused on PC substitution, the possibility of replacing the natural aggregate with glass waste (GW) is investigated. The substitution of sand is carried out in the three types of mortars (AAM, HM and reference PC) with the aim of reducing water consumption, as sand is the component with the highest water demand. However, only the AAM system, SLAG, allows up to 25% of sand to be replaced by GW (SLAG75), thanks to the high cohesion of its main reaction product, the C-A-S-H gel. When the alternatives are manufactured together with the PC reference mortar, both the compressive mechanical properties and the key thermal properties for a TES, thermal conductivity and specific heat, are evaluated before and after various thermal treatments. After analyzing how the mechanical and thermal properties are affected after thermal treatments −including exposure to constant temperatures and thermal cycling−, it is determined that the alternative systems offer comparable and even superior mechanical stability under temperature exposure than a conventional PC system. In addition, alternative materials, characterized by their thermal conductivity and specific heat, show a superior suitability for TES applications compared to PC. More specifically, the AAM system, SLAG, exhibits operational characteristics superior to PC by reducing heat-up times and increasing its storage capacity, which allows for a reduction in TES volume and a reduction in heat exchanger surface area. While the HM system, HSLAG, does not reach the performance of SLAG, it does offer operational improvements compared to PC. These promising results are attributed to less degradation of the reaction products generated in the alternative mortars and better cohesion between the binder and the aggregate. This last factor had a negative effect on SLAG75, as the weakness in the bond created between the binder and the GW, as well as a greater difference in the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE), lead to the generation of porosity, and even cracks, which determine both the mechanical and thermal behavior. Thus, when selecting a material such as TES, porosity must be controlled and evaluated as a critical parameter. The results displayed by the PC alternative systems developed in this Doctoral Thesis demonstrate their suitability to be selected as sustainable TES both at low-medium and high temperatures. Consequently, it can be generally concluded that the proposed alternative materials show a promising potential for their application as TES blocks. Thus, further research and development in this field could lead to the widespread adoption of these materials as TES, thus contributing to the transition towards sustainable and renewable energy systems.