• Energy Research
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Fashion products made from repurposed materials (e.g., backpacks made from pineapple leaves) have become more prevalent nowadays, and their environmental sustainability is one of the core advantages. Yet, it is currently unclear how consumers respond to products made from repurposed materials. We conducted three experiments to examine the effects of three material features, namely function, sustainability, and distinguishability, on consumer preferences for fashion products made from repurposed materials. The results indicate that, when the function of repurposed materials is as good as that of conventional materials, consumers prefer a product made from repurposed materials over the same product made from conventional materials. Also, consumers in general prefer repurposed materials to be less visually distinguishable. Finally, when the sustainability of the repurposed products is emphasized, consumers appear more likely to choose products made from repurposed materials, even when these products have an inferior function. In conclusion, to promote fashion products made from repurposed materials, marketers may emphasize the function and sustainability of repurposed materials, and producers may manufacture repurposed materials that visually resemble conventional materials.

Article Abstract To better allocate funds in the new EU research framework programme Horizon Europe, an assessment of current and past efforts is crucial. In this paper we develop and apply a multi-method qualitative and computational approach to provide a catalogue of climate crisis mitigation technologies on the EU level between 2014 and 2020. Using the approach, we observed no public EU-level funding for multiple technologies prioritised by the EU, such as low-carbon production and use of cement and chemicals, electric battery, and a number of industrial decarbonisation processes. We observed a rising trend in the funding of solar power and onshore wind, the adjacent to them power-to-X technology, as well as recycling. At the same time, the shares of funding into fuel cell, biofuel, demand-side energy management, microgrids, and waste management show a decline trend. With note of the exploratory character of the present paper, we propose that the EU Horizon 2020 funding of clean technologies only partially reflected the expectations of key institutionalised EU actors due to the existence of many non-funded prioritised technologies.

The dataset covers biotic and abiotic data from the aquatic habitat of a population of the sediment-rooted macrophyte Myriophyllum spicatum in the temperate climate region (The Netherlands). The growth of M. spicatum was monitored in 0.2025 m2 plant baskets installed in an experimental ditch. Parameters monitored included biomass (fresh and dry weight), shoot length, seasonal short-term growth rates of shoots, relevant environmental parameters and weather data. This dataset includes the 2-year experimental biotic (macrophyte biomass and growth data) and environmental data (water quality data, sediment data). A second file includes the statistical data. A third file includes the weather data.

This study focuses on formulating the most sustainable concrete by incorporating recycled concrete aggregates and other products retrieved from construction and demolition (C&D) activities. Both recycled coarse aggregates (RCA) and recycled fine aggregates (RFA) are firstly used to fully replace the natural coarse and fine aggregates in the concrete mix design. Later, the cement rich ultrafine particles, recycled glass powder and mineral fibres recovered from construction and demolition wastes (CDW) are further incorporated at a smaller rate either as cement substituent or as supplementary additives. Remarkable properties are noticed when the RCA (4–12 mm) and RFA (0.25–4 mm) are fully used to replace the natural aggregates in a new concrete mix. The addition of recycled cement rich ultrafines (RCU), Recycled glass ultrafines (RGU) and recycled mineral fibres (RMF) into recycled concrete improves the modulus of elasticity. The final concrete, which comprises more than 75% (wt.) of recycled components/materials, is believed to be the most sustainable and green concrete mix. Mechanical properties and durability of this concrete have been studied and found to be within acceptable limits, indicating the potential of recycled aggregates and other CDW components in shaping sustainable and circular construction practices. The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from EU Horizon 2020 Project VEEP ‘‘Cost-Effective Recycling of C&DW in High Added Value Energy Efficient Prefabricated Concrete Compo-nents for Massive Retrofitting of our Built Environment” (No.723582).

Assessing ambitious nature conservation strategies in a below 2 degrees warmer and food-secure world – supplementary spatial data Authors: Marcel Kok, Johan Meijer, Willem-Jan van Zeist, Jelle Hilbers, Marco Immovilli, Jan Janse, Elke Stehfest, Michel Bakkenes, Andrzej Tabeau, Aafke Schipper, Rob Alkemade Point of contact: Marcel.Kok@pbl.nl Research paper summary: Global biodiversity is projected to further decline under a wide range of future socio-economic development pathways, even in sustainability-oriented scenarios. This raises the question how biodiversity can be put on a path to recovery, the core challenge for the CBD post-2020 global biodiversity framework. We designed two contrasting, ambitious global conservation strategies, ‘Half Earth’ (HE) and ‘Sharing the Planet’ (SP), and evaluated their ability to restore terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity and to provide nature’s contributions to people (NCP), while also limiting global warming below 2 degrees and ensuring food security. We applied the integrated assessment framework IMAGE with the GLOBIO biodiversity model, using the ‘Middle of the Road’ Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP2) with its projected human population growth as baseline. We found that both conservation strategies reduce the global loss of biodiversity and NCP, but are insufficient to restore biodiversity. The HE strategy performs generally better for terrestrial biodiversity (biodiversity intactness (MSA), Area of Habitat Index, Living Planet Index, Red List Index) in currently still natural regions. The SP strategy yields more improvements for biodiversity in human-used areas, aquatic biodiversity and for regulating NCP (pest control, pollination, erosion control, water quality). However, the ‘conservation only’ scenarios show a considerable increase in food security risks and further global temperature increase, compared to the baseline. To restore biodiversity, it is necessary to combine conservation strategies with a portfolio of ‘integrated sustainability measures’ including climate change mitigation actions to change the energy and food systems, where minimizing food wastes and reducing consumption of animal products are crucial. The combination of conservation strategies and additional sustainability measures will restore biodiversity an NCP while keeping global warming below two degrees and food security risks below the baseline projection. Contents: This repository contains the supplementary spatial data describing the specific prioritization of conservation areas under the Half Earth (HE) and Sharing the Planet (SP) scenarios, and the resulting scenario land use and MSA data sets for the year 2050, including also a baseline (BL) scenario. All spatial data is in geotiff format at a 10 arcsecond resolution in WGS84 coordinate system. Detailed description of the methodology is provided in the paper listed under "related identifiers". Keywords: Nature conservation, Half Earth, Sharing the Planet, Climate Change, Food Security, Solution-oriented scenarios, Biodiversity, Nature’s Contribution to People, NCP This repository contains the supplementary spatial data describing the specific prioritization of conservation areas under the Half Earth (HE) and Sharing the Planet (SP) scenarios, and the resulting scenario land use and MSA data sets for the year 2050, including also a baseline (BL) scenario. All spatial data is in geotiff format at a 10 arcsecond resolution in WGS84 coordinate system. Detailed description of the methodology is provided in the paper listed under "related identifiers".

Energy Climate dataset consistent with ENTSO-E Pan-European Climatic Database (PECD 2021.3) in CSV and netCDF format TL;DR: this is a nationally aggregated hourly dataset for the capacity factors per unit installed capacity for storage hydropower plants and run-of-river hydropower plants in the European region. All the data is provided for 30 climatic years (1981-2010). Method Description The hydro inflow data is based on historical river runoff reanalysis data simulated by the E-HYPE model. E-HYPE is a pan-European model developed by The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), which describes hydrological processes including flow paths at the subbasin level. E-hype only provides the time series of daily river runoff entering the inlet of each European subbasin over 1981-2010. To match the operational resolution of the dispatch model, we linearly downscale these time series to hourly. By summing up runoff associated with the inlet subbasins of each country, we also obtain the country-level river runoff. The hydro inflow time series per country is defined as the normalized energy inflows (per unit installed capacity of hydropower) embodied in the country-level river runoff. A dispatch model can be used to decides whether the energy inflows are actually used for electricity generation, stored, or spilled (in case the storage reservoir is already full). Data coverage This dataset considers two types of hydropower plants, namely storage hydropower plant (STO) and run-of-river hydropower plant (ROR). Not all countries have both types of hydropower plants installed (see table). The countries and their acronyms for both technologies included in this dataset are: Country Run-of-River Storage Austria AT_ROR AT_STO Belgium BE_ROR BE_STO Bulgaria BG_ROR BG_STO Switzerland CH_ROR CH_STO Cyprus CZ_ROR CZ_STO Germany DE_ROR DE_STO Denmark DK_ROR Estonia EE_ROR Greece EL_ROR EL_STO Spain ES_ROR ES_STO Finland FI_ROR FI_STO France FR_ROR FR_STO Great Britain GB_ROR GB_STO Croatia HR_ROR HR_STO Hungary HU_ROR HU_STO Ireland IE_ROR IE_STO Italy IT_ROR IT_STO Luxembourg LU_ROR Latvia LV_ROR the Netherlands NL_ROR Norway NO_ROR NO_STO Poland PL_ROR PL_STO Portugal PT_ROR PT_STO Romania RO_ROR RO_STO Sweden SE_ROR SE_STO Slovenia SI_ROR SI_STO Slovakia SK_ROR SK_STO Data structure description The files is provided in CSV (.csv) format with a comma (,) as separator and double-quote mark (") as text indicator. The first row stores the column labels. The columns contain the following: first column (or A) contains the row number Label: unlabeled Contents: interger range [1,262968] second column (or B) contains the valid-time Label: T1h Contents represent time with text as [DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM]) column 3-52 (or C-AY) each contain the capacity factor for each valid combination of a country and hydropower plant type Label: XX_YYY the two letter country code (XX) and the hydropower plant type (YYY) acronym for storage hydropower plant (STO) and run-of-river hydropower plant (ROR) Contents represent the capacity factor as a floating value in the range [0,1], the decimal separator is a point (.). DISCLAIMER: the content of this dataset has been created with the greatest possible care. However, we invite to use the original data for critical applications and studies. The raw hydro data was generated as part of 'Evaluating sediment Delivery Impacts on Reservoirs in changing climaTe and society across scales and sectors (DIRT-X)', this project and therefor, Jing hu, received funding from the European Research Area Network (ERA-NET) under grant number 438.19.902. Laurens P. Stoop received funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under Grant No. 647.003.005.

Results belonging to paper "High-rate biological selenate reduction in a sequencing batch reactor for recovery of hexagonal selenium".Recovery of selenium (Se) from wastewater provides a solution for both securing Se supply and preventing Se pollution. Here, we developed a high-rate process for biological selenate reduction to elemental selenium. Distinctive from other studies, we aimed for a process with selenate as the main biological electron sink, with minimal formation of methane or sulfide. A sequencing batch reactor, fed with an influent containing 120 mgSe L-1 selenate and ethanol as electron donor and carbon source, was operated for 495 days. The high rates (419 �� 17 mgSe L-1 day-1) were recorded between day 446 and day 495 for a hydraulic retention time of 6h. The maximum conversion efficiency of selenate amounted to 96% with a volumetric conversion rate of 444 mgSe L-1 day-1, which is 6 times higher than the rates reported in the literature thus far. At the end of the experiment, a highly enriched selenate reducing biomass had developed, with a specific activity of 856��26 mgSe-1day-1gbiomass-1, which was nearly 1000-fold higher than that of the inoculum. No evidence was found for the formation of methane, sulfide, or volatile reduced selenium compounds like dimethyl-selenide or H2Se, revealing a high selectivity. Ethanol was incompletely oxidized to acetate. The produced elemental selenium partially accumulated in the reactor as pure (���80% Se of the total mixture of biomass sludge flocs and flaky aggregates, and ~100% of the specific flaky aggregates) selenium black hexagonal needles, with cluster sizes between 20-200 ��m. The new process may serve as the basis for a high-rate technology to remove and recover pure selenium from wastewater or process streams with high selectivity.