• Energy Research
• other engineering and technologies close
• 11. Sustainability close
• Applied Energy close

Shale gas, due to its clean-burning and efficient nature, is becoming an increasingly promising alternative energy resource. It is commonly held that promoting shale gas development will gradually play a significant role in meeting the energy needs of economic and social development as well as reducing harm to the environment. Given the significant implications, many countries are pursuing shale gas opportunities. However, numerous concerns have been raised about the economics of shale gas development, as it is difficult to evaluate. Accurately evaluating the economic viability of shale gas development to reduce investment risks and increase investment opportunity is the key issue that needs to be urgently addressed. This paper presents a systematic review and examination of the technical and economic evaluation techniques for the development of shale gas to provide an overview of their current status. Over time, some progress has been made in existing technical–economic evaluation techniques. It is worth noting that these techniques need to be further improved to more precisely assess the economic feasibility of developing shale gas for assisting investment decisions effectively. For this reason, various potentially useful ideas and approaches are presented to propose some potential improvement in evaluation techniques for shale gas development, which may materialize in possible future trends.

Abstract A variety of novel, recyclable and reusable, construction materials has already been studied within literature during the past years, aiming at improving the overall energy efficiency ranking of the building envelope. However, several studies show that a delicate control of indoor climating elements can lead to a significant performance improvement by exploiting the building’s savings potential via smart adaptive HVAC regulation to exogenous uncertain disturbances (e.g. weather, occupancy). Building Optimization and Control (BOC) systems can be categorized into two different groups: centralized (requiring high data transmission rates at a central node from every corner of the overall system) and decentralized 1 (assuming an intercommunication among neighboring constituent systems). Moreover, both approaches can be further divided into two subcategories, respectively: model-assisted (usually introducing modeling oversimplifications) and model-free (typically presenting poor stability and very slow convergence rates). This paper presents the application of a novel, decentralized, agent-based , model-free BOC methodology (abbreviated as L4GPCAO) to a modern non-residential building (E.ON. Energy Research Center’s main building), equipped with controllable HVAC systems and renewable energy sources by utilizing the existing Building Management System (BES). The building testbed is located inside the RWTH Aachen University campus in Aachen, Germany. A combined rule criterion composed of the non-renewable energy consumption (NREC) and the thermal comfort index – aligned to international comfort standards – was adopted in all cases presented herein. Besides the limited availability of the specified building testbed, real-life experiments demonstrated operational effectiveness of the proposed approach in BOC applications with complex, emerging dynamics arising from the building’s occupancy and thermal characteristics. L4GPCAO outperformed the control strategy that was designed by the planers and system provider, in a conventional manner, requiring no more than five test days.

Abstract Urban planners, local authorities, and energy policymakers often develop strategic sustainable energy plans for the urban building stock in order to minimize overall energy consumption and emissions. Planning at such scales could be informed by building stock modeling using existing building data and Geographic Information System-based mapping. However, implementing these processes involves several issues, namely, data availability, data inconsistency, data scalability, data integration, geocoding, and data privacy. This research addresses the aforementioned information challenges by proposing a generalized integrated methodology that implements bottom-up, data-driven, and spatial modeling approaches for multi-scale Geographic Information System mapping of building energy modeling. This study uses the Irish building stock to map building energy performance at multiple scales. The generalized data-driven methodology uses approximately 650,000 Irish Energy Performance Certificates buildings data to predict more than 2 million buildings’ energy performance. In this case, the approach delivers a prediction accuracy of 88% using deep learning algorithms. These prediction results are then used for spatial modeling at multiple scales from the individual building level to a national level. Furthermore, these maps are coupled with available spatial resources (social, economic, or environmental data) for energy planning, analysis, and support decision-making. The modeling results identify clusters of buildings that have a significant potential for energy savings within any specific region. Geographic Information System-based modeling aids stakeholders in identifying priority areas for implementing energy efficiency measures. Furthermore, the stakeholders could target local communities for retrofit campaigns, which would enhance the implementation of sustainable energy policy decisions.

Over the past three decades, Swedish energy policy has evolved in three major stages—oil reduction, phase-out of nuclear energy, renewable energy—each with a different focus. Since 1977, Swedish law has required municipalities to develop an energy plan that addresses the supply, distribution, and use of energy. Whether such plans have contributed to the development of local energy-systems has been a subject for debate. This paper is based on a study of 12 municipal energy-plans that attempted to control and develop local energy-systems in southern Sweden. The analysis examines how municipalities promote oil reduction, efficient energy use, and the use of renewable energy. The plans varied in planning processes, contents, and level of ambition. The results of the study show that the contents of the plans follow the national energy-policies with respect to reduction of oil use, improved energy efficiency, and increased use of renewable energy.

Abstract In the past, most studies considered solar as a drawback to road pavement, especially the asphalt pavement. Not only its radiation causes the asphalt aging, simultaneously with high temperature, asphalt pavement contributes to the urban heat island (UHI) effect. In recent, as the world becomes more supportive towards implementing sustainable energy as the alternatives to the scarcity of non-renewable resources, utilizing the abundant solar radiation as the main source of energy has gradually attracted attention from both industries and academia with its potentials, including solar application on roads. Nevertheless, more researches have focused on the potential energy collection with less consideration to simultaneously overcome the side effects of abundant solar radiation on its lifecycle. This study found the necessity to review a comprehensive correlation between solar radiation and asphalt pavement from both positive and negative effects. The negative effects included asphalt aging and its effects on surroundings i.e. UHI effect. Meanwhile, the positive effects included exhaust purification and solar energy conversion into other forms of energy that can be used by humans using pavement solar heat collection for winter snowmelt, thermoelectric technology and photoelectric technology to convert solar energy into electrical energy. The cases in various application scenarios were analysed and summarized and the existing problems in the current research were proposed in this paper. Also, the reflection on the transformation of road design concept from “avoiding harm” to “seeking profit” was included. Finally, a new concept of “solar-road harmonious symbiosis” for future road application was proposed based on a comprehensive review of previous published works. It is also the new suggestion to scholars on the treatment of solar diseases on roads to prolong its symbiosis functions.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the social and environmental costs and benefits of biofuels in Asia. The major factors that will determine the impacts of biofuels are: (1) their contribution to land-use change, (2) the feedstocks used, and (3) issues of technology and scale. Biofuels offer economic benefits, and in the right circumstances can reduce emissions and make a small contribution to energy security. Feedstocks that involve the conversion of agricultural land will affect food security and cause indirect land-use change, while those that replace forests, wetlands or natural grasslands will increase emissions and damage biodiversity. Biofuels from cellulose, algae or waste will avoid some of these problems, but come with their own set of uncertainties and risks. In order to ensure net societal benefits of biofuel production, governments, researchers, and companies will need to work together to carry out comprehensive assessments, map suitable and unsuitable areas, and define and apply standards relevant to the different circumstances of each country. The greatest benefits may come from feedstocks produced on a modest scale as co-products of smart technologies developed for phytoremediation, waste disposal and emissions reduction.

Abstract Global energy consumption is increasing at a dramatic rate and will likely continue to do so. The major source of energy is still fossil fuel, which has resulted in the well-documented problem of global warming due to the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of such fuel. Climate change and global warming are among the crucial and complex issues encountered by the world today, and they require an immediate solution. Technological innovation is the key to ensuring energy security without causing emissions and providing efficient cost-effective energy solutions. Power electronic technologies offer high reliability and renewable energy conversion efficiency, thus contributing to energy conservation, improving energy efficiency, and helping in the mitigation of harmful global emissions. This review focuses on various aspects of power electronic technologies and their importance in tackling carbon emission and global warming problems. The key topologies of power electronic converters are explained based on types, control difficulties, benefits, and drawbacks. Power electronic controllers utilized for energy conversion are comprehensively reviewed with regard to their structure, algorithm complexity, strengths and weaknesses, and mathematical modeling. The review focuses on power converters and controllers used in different applications and highlight their contributions to energy conservation, increasing the share of renewable energy sources, and mitigating emissions. Moreover, existing research gaps, issues, and challenges are identified. The insights provided by are expected to lead to the enhanced development of advanced power electronic converters and controllers for sustainable energy conversion. Such development can reduce carbon emissions and mitigate global warming.

Abstract The automotive operating protocols is a comprehensive expression of a country or a region’s road, climatic environment and driving habits. It is the foundation of energy consumption, test method and limit method for automobile products. It has direct impact on R & D, production and government access management of enterprises. For fuel cells vehicles, the lifetime is one of the main factors restricting their commercialization. Furthermore, the lifetime evaluation methods and its standard specifications of vehicular proton exchange membrane fuel cell are the critical factors to its technological development, but there is no authoritative recognized life evaluation method and test protocols so far. A logical fuel cell durability test protocol is the fundamental for developing the fuel cell life evaluation methods. A review on the state-of-art in the world for fuel cell accelerated test protocols was given, the research circumstances of different universities and research institutions in China, America, the European Union, Japan and so on are analyzed and summarized in detail. Then the essential characteristics and applicable environments of a comprehensive and effective durability test protocol are summarized based on the analysis and demonstration of the existing durability test protocols in literature. The work in this paper focuses on the research of durability test protocols of the fuel cell stack for the first time. The final conclusion will provide theoretical basis for establishing fuel cell durability test specifications and proposing life evaluation methods, and make a contribution to the long life research of vehicular fuel cells.

As one of the three high-energy consumption sectors (industry, building, and transportation) in China, the transport sector faced a devastating resource and environment challenge. The transport sector was reportedly responsible for about 15.9% of the country’s total final energy consumption in 2008. This paper investigates the energy consumption and efficiency of China’s transport sector from 2003 to 2009. The transport energy data of 30 China administrative regions were divided into “three-belts” (Eastern, Western, and Central areas), and the corresponding turnovers were reported and analyzed using an index decomposition analysis (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index). The energy data and turnover of the transport sector indicated that the high growth rate of turnover results is attributed to the high growth rate of diesel, assuming that diesel is the major fuel for freight transport. The growth of diesel is the main contributor to the overall growth of energy consumption. The growth rate of gasoline has become minimal since 2006. Since 2005, all three-belt areas, with regard to the effectiveness of energy conservation policies, have continuously improved their energy efficiencies based on the results of decomposition analysis. The energy intensity effect shows that the energy conservation and efficiency policies were more effective in the Central and Western areas than that in the Eastern area. On the other hand, the regional shift effect indicates that the policies favor to the Eastern area since only its regional shift effect contributes energy savings since 2008. The energy-mix effect is insignificant, which indicates that it is not necessary to conduct CO2 emission decomposition analysis due to the redundant observations. At last, the activity effect dominates the energy consumption increase (98.05% of the accumulated total energy increase) from 2003 to 2009, which is consistent with the rapid development of transportation in China. That is, the policies in the transport sector mainly focused on the economic development but the energy efficiencies in the study period.