• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close
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AbstractEnergy is the biggest crisis to humanity in the future. Nowadays, most of the energy used on earth comes from oil, gas and coal. According to the recent exploring and consuming rates, the energy will be exhausted in 50-100 years. Whether we can solve the crisis is closely related to the survival of humanity on the earth. The irradiation from the sun is the biggest energy source. Building PV power plant to utilize the energy from sun will be an only way to sustain the life cycle on the earth. However, the development of PV power plants require the huge supply of PV cell and the fabrication process may bring a quantity of pollution and waste, which is harmful to the environment. On the other hand, super large PV power plant will occupy huge land. If the land cannot be explored and used reasonably, this will not benefit the human life either. In this article, we address the discussions about the above problems and propose the initial suggestions about development trend of PV industry and the safety operation mode of super PV power plant.

AbstractIn the last years, the number of installed biofuels power plants is increased in northern Italy, due to favorable legislation on renewable energy sources, posing the issue to assess the resulting environmental effects. The European legislation on emissions for renewable fuels power plants provides guidelines to be integrated in the local regulations; moreover, local authorities have to identify the critical power plants in terms of pollution and the key parameters to grant licenses for the future plants.The aim of this paper is to describe a methodology and the calculation routine developed to assess the environmental effects of biomass plants in terms of simple indexes. The used approach is based on the Cross-Media Effects described by a European Commission Reference Document. In particular, several indexes are introduced to cover the most relevant environmental effects, as: air toxicity, global warming, acidification, eutrophication and photochemical ozone creation. For every considered pollutant (such as NOx, CO, etc.) directly emitted by the power plant, specific factors have been identified, in order to calculate the contribution to the different environmental indexes. Finally, a numerical evaluation of different biomass power plants, installed in Emilia Romagna region, is provided, in order to assess their environmental cross-media potential and to compare such kind of power plants with large scale, fossil-fuelled power plants.

AbstractEven though the integration of renewable energies in new buildings is technically easy, the rise of solar thermal systems in the French market of energy renovation is limited by recurring constraints of implementation related to the installation of the storage tank. This is the reason why the Integrated Solar Collector (ISC) constitutes a very promising concept to develop. For both new buildings and renovation of the existing buildings, the ISC gives the opportunity to reduce the cost of installation and operation comparatively to a conventional Solar Domestic Hot Water System, because of their simplicity and passive operating process (without pump, nor controller). This second advantage is extremely important for the development prospects of the solar thermal market which is currently slowed down by the level of investment. The third advantage of our new ISC is the possibility of successful architectural integration, contrary to the currently available solutions with the storage installed on the roof.We developed a new concept of ISC adapted to the energy renovation with a multidisciplinary approach. Its design took into account various aspects: architectural integration (storage bellow the collector), energy performance (solar heat transfer at the bottom of the storage, fully insulated storage) and technological constraints (freezing risk). The project made it possible to study on the one hand its global performance (stratification, solar fraction) and on the other hand the free convective heat transfers inside the storage cavity. The approach used both numerical (architectural draft and design of the prototype, global modelling, and velocity / temperature fields) and experimental tools (test of heat, PIV on a cavity heated at the bottom, test of the prototype). The first prototype of ISC puts forward very satisfactory energy performances. Improvements are possible by enhancing thermal stratification in the storage system. Concerning the heat pipes operation against gravity, the project highlighted the current lack of technological solution adapted to our needs. The study of the building integration showed the architectural opportunities given during the renovation (new volumes) and the technical constraints which were solved (weight, storage insulation, freezing).

AbstractIncrease in energy demand has made the renewable resources more attractive. Representing the largest sources of renewable energy, Solar and wind systems are expanding due to the rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources and the growing evidence of the global warming phenomena. This study aims to investigate the techno-economic impacts of a hybrid grid connected PV/wind energy system applied for a medium cattle farm in the north part of Algerian desert. The target location is a medium farm of 20 dairy cows in Ghardaia city, with the total annual electrical energy consumption of 6.716kWh, and a peak demand of about 7.7kW. The system is optimized using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) HOMER software according to the net present cost (NPC) value. Furthermore, three scenarios are proposed to assess the system configuration according to its impact on both technical and economic balance of the farm. It is found that under the specific climatic conditions of the studied location, the three optimized systems satisfy the typical farm load of 18kWh per day. The second scenario optimized system meets the requirement of paying back the total costs of system investment during the system's lifetime and the third scenario optimized system enhances the grid reliability by decreasing the power grid peak load by 70kW and feeding to the grid 119MWh annually.

AbstractWhen addressing community engagement and outreach, North American carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects have parameters unique to the continent, including the history of CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR), which goes back over 40 years in some jurisdictions and, aligned with this, the use of landmen and one-on-one dialogue with landowners and community residents that are well versed in oilfield technologies.These variables alone are in marked contrast to the CCS experiences of many global projects, which do not have the tradition of engaging in one-on-one discussion. Even where CCS projects have conducted extensive public consultation and education, significant opposition has shut down some, and put in jeopardy others, in a manner that contradicts the North American hydrocarbon experience. With the increase in North America of integrated CCS projects that go beyond CO2-EOR, a change in community engagement strategies has taken place under the unique auspices of the United States Department of Energy's (US DOE) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnerships Initiative (RCSP). Part of the planning in each of these seven geographic regions includes significant public education, outreach, and communications programs, particularly in areas unfamiliar with injection and storage technologies (i.e., outside of traditional oil producing areas). The bringing together of different demonstration projects’ participants – not just nationally within the US but including projects in Western Canada – has allowed for the sharing of best practices between projects and across international jurisdictions.Such sharing is particularly true where the development of community engagement guidelines and strategies are concerned. The publication in 2010 of the US DOE's Best Practices for Public Outreach and Education for Carbon Storage Projects is one example where the experiences of several United States demonstration projects were brought to bear on developing communications guidelines, which in turn were used to help develop public outreach strategies for such projects as Aquistore in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada [1]. Another example of such international information sharing is the World Resources Institute's Guidelines for Community Engagement in Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport, and Storage Projects where, over a period of a year and a half, international experts were brought together for round table discussions to form the basis of the guidelines and provide an international peer review [2].More recently, the development of an emergency response plan for the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project, led by the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium, one of the RCSP partnerships, drew upon this international collaborative structure, employing the experience of communicators from Schlumberger Carbon Services, the Petroleum Technology Research Centre (managers of the IEAGHG Weyburn- Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project) and the Illinois State Geological Survey to develop a map of potential crisis points. This planning process brought together the lessons learned from various projects, risk assessments, media experiences, and best practices to help identify potential risks for the project (a list of events and scenarios) with the goal of creating response paths and directions for the management of risks and the mitigation of potential threats. These scenarios involved not only potential external issues – such as leakage or pipeline failure – but also addressed management issues internal to a project such as loss of key personnel or loss of funding.The development of this emergency response plan is an example to other projects of the value of interconnecting communications experiences between projects, and of identifying common high-risk scenarios that require advanced response planning.

Abstract Recently, the amount of Yogyakarta province municipal solid waste (MSW) came into Piyungan landfill site stood at around 470 ton/day consisting of 77% organic and 23% inorganic fractions. Annually, there was an increase as many as 8% per annum for the amount of MSW. Reduction of the MSW can be "forced" in integrated waste management site (in Indonesia is called TPST) which was built in the municipal level. In each TPST, there are two main activities which are Recycling and Composting. Both scenarios assume that 23% of inorganic waste can be recycled so that the subsequent need is to manage organic waste. Based on these considerations, calculations performed with: 1). Scenario 1: The TPST has been operated but there is no waste reduction at the source; 2). Scenario 2: TPST is operated and followed by solid waste reduction at the source. If the second scenario is applied, the amount of waste that goes to landfill Piyungan can be reduced up to 200 ton/day. Actually, scenario 1 is the realistic one because of Indonesian’s culture. Unfortunately, as scenario 1 was highly dependent on the TPST, the number of TPST which must be built increase steadily that it can reach 60 units in 2030 which is impossible to find space in Yogyakarta province. If the second scenario is applied, the amount of waste that goes to Piyungan landfill site can be reduced gradually from 25% (1-3 years), 35% (4-7 years), and 50% (8-15 years) through composting activity. The challenge possessed by scenario 2 is how to force people reduce their own organic waste by composting activity.

AbstractTraditional urban design methods focus on the form-making process and lack performance dimensions such as energy efficiency. There are inherent differences between Urban Design as a model of decision-making for choosing form alternatives and Energy System Modeling as a model of evaluating and assessing system functions. To design a high energy performance city, the gap between the two models must be bridged. We propose a research design that combines the Urban Design Computational Model (UDCM) and the Optimization Model of Energy Process (OMEP) to demonstrate how an urban design computation can be integrated with an energy performance process and system. An evidence-based case study of community-level near zero energy districts will be needed for future work.

AbstractThe International Energy Agency Energy Technologies Perspectives (ETP) model is used for the assessment of the prospects for carbon abatement options, including carbon capture and storage, up to 2050. Three main scenarios are considered: a baseline scenario with current energy policies, an accelerated technology scenario (ACT) with an associated CO2 reduction incentive development, and a scenario in which global greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 50% compared to current levels in 2050 (BLUE). The analysis suggests that CCS can account for up to 19% of all CO2 reduction in 2050, which would equal 10.4 Gt CO2 capture and storage. The power sector would account for 54% of all CCS, the remainder is in manufacturing industry and the fuel transformation sector.CCS is a critical option. Without CCS, the cost to meet the same target would rise by 71%. The potential rate at which CCS can be introduced exceeds the rate at which regular capital stock is typically replaced, if plants are retrofitted or closed down before the end of their technical life span. Retrofitting of coal plants with CCS plays a very significant role in the ACT Map scenario. But at the price of USD 200/t CO2 envisaged in the BLUE scenario, there is sufficient economic incentive to accelerate the replacement of inefficient power plants with new plants equipped with CCS before the existing plants reach the end of their life span. In the BLUE scenario, 350 GW of coal-fired power-plant capacity is closed down early. The remaining 700 GW consists of 80% new capacity that is equipped with CCS, and 20% retrofits with CCS.Following IEA recommendations, the G8 countries have announced that they will commit 20 demonstration plants for CCS by 2010. Also the G8, China India and Korea have asked the IEA to continue its work on roadmaps and transition paths for CCS in power generation and in industry, in cooperation with other bodies such as CSLF. This work has started and final results will be reported in 2010.