• Energy Research

A rise in the number of EVs (electric vehicles) in Europe is putting pressure on power grids. At an urban scale, Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) are devised as archetypes of (small) urban districts managing a set of interconnected buildings and district elements (lighting system, vehicles, smart grid, etc.). This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of the impact of e-mobility in a PED, simulated using MATLAB-Simulink software. The PED, a small district in northern Spain, is assessed in five scenarios representing varying requirements in terms of energy efficiency of buildings, type of street lighting and number of EVs. The results suggest that the energy rating of the buildings (ranging from A for the most efficient to E) conditions the annual energy balance. A PED with six interconnected buildings (3 residential and 3 of public use) and 405 EVs (as a baseline) only achieves positivity when the buildings have a high energy rating (certificate A or B). In the most efficient case (A-rated buildings), simulation results show that the PED can support 695 EVs; in other words, it can provide nearly 9 million green kilometres. This result represents a potential 71% saving in carbon emissions from e-mobility alone (as compared to the use of fossil-fuel vehicles), thus contributing a reduction in the carbon footprint of the district and the city as a whole.

The quantification of the sustainability degree of the waste management chain in a municipality or a region is essential to move forward a more sustainable scenario. This paper presents the WESTE methodology for holistically evaluation the waste management chain under an environmental, social, technical and economic (ESTE) perspective. The methodology allows benchmarking the sustainability degree of a case study, making comparisons among different case studies and tracking the developments over the time. As a result, 12 high level sustainability indicators have been defined and more than 50 intermediate and low-level indicators. 70% of the indicators are technical indicators describing the performance of the system such as the amount of waste collected or the kilometres per route. Social indicators cover the 14% of them describing mainly the behaviour of the citizens. Environmental and economic indicators account for the 16% of indicators describing the environmental impact and cost of the system. {"references": ["http://uest.ntua.gr/athens2017/proceedings/presentations/ORIBE-GARCIA_11_45.pdf"]}

Our ecosystem, particularly forest lands, contains huge amounts of carbon storage in the world today. This study estimated the above ground biomass and carbon stock in the green space of Bilbao Spain using remote sensing technology. Landsat ETM+ and OLI satellite images for year 1999, 2009 and 2019 were used to assess its land use land cover (LULC), change detection, spectral indices and model biomass based on linear regression. The result of the LULC showed that there was an increase in forest vegetation by 12.5% from 1999 to 2009 and a further increase by 2.3% in 2019. However, plantation cover had decreased by 3.5% from 1999–2009; while wetlands had also decreased by 9% within the same period. There was, however, an increase in plantation cover from 2009 to 2019 by 2.1% but a further decrease in wetlands of 4.3%. Further results revealed a positive correlation across the three decades between the widely used Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI) with other spectral indices such as Enhance Vegetation Index (EVI) and Normalized Differential Moisture Index (NDMI) for biomass were: for 1999 EVI (R2 = 0.1826), NDMI (R2 = 0.0117), for 2009 EVI (R2 = 0.2192), NDMI (R2 = 0.3322), for 2019EVI (R2 = 0.1258), NDMI (R2 = 0.8148). A reduction in the total carbon stock from 14,221.94 megatons in 1999 to 10,342.44 megatons 2019 was observed. This study concluded that there has been a reduction in the amount of carbon which the Biscay Forest can sequester.

Sheets with information on the FOODRUS KPIs, including: general description, calculation methodology, and observations.

These data correspond to the process of KPIs definition to measure the impact of Food Loss and Waste prevention strategies in FOODRUS. Both the initial long list of KPIs that started the process, and the results of 3 different surveys delivered to experts and stakeholders are included here.

This deliverable will define the Sustainability Assessment Model for all the solutions involved in the project as well as calculating the baseline of every pilot using this model. Each section will have a brief description of the specific characteristics of the waste management systems of each pilot, the general and specific objectives, the methodology used and the main results. When necessary an appendix will be used to include all the supplementary information. When necessary an appendix will be used to include all the supplementary information. This deliverable will set the basis of comparison to follow the progress of the project in terms of KPIs for the four pilots. However, as in this stage the methodology is still being implementing some corrections or updates (specially regarding the data) may be necessary in the future. Any change that may arise in the KPI methodology or in the update of the data will be updated in the subsequent monitoring reports (from D1.4 to D1.7).

Presentation in the ISWA CALC mini-conference "Best practice on indicators and metrics on waste prevention cascades" of the first long list of KPIs for food loss and waste prevention that will be used in FOODRUS.