• Energy Research

As the effects of global warming have become more evident, ambitious short-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets have been set in recent years. Many cities worldwide have adopted an active approach to climate change mitigation, but policy makers are not always knowledgeable of the true effects of their planned mitigation action. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of different mitigation strategies in achieving low-carbon urban communities. The assessment is conducted via means of consumption based hybrid life-cycle assessment, which allows the reduction potential to be analyzed from the perspective of an individual resident of the urban community. The assessed actions represent strategies that are both adopted by the case cities and possible to implement with current best practices in Finland. The four assessed actions comprise: (1) dense urban structure with less private driving; (2) the use of energy production based on renewable sources; (3) new low-energy residential construction; and (4) improving the energy efficiency of existing buildings. The findings show that the effectiveness depends greatly on the type of city, although in absolute terms the most significant reduction potential lies with lowering the fossil fuel dependence of the local energy production.

Identifying the energy needs of citizens and taking into account different lifestyles and patterns of consumption is a first step for a global transformation towards renewable, fair and democratic energy systems. Currently, Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES) is the most widely used metric of energy consumption, which only includes the energy consumed within a country. This research addresses an alternative indicator, Total Primary Energy Footprint (TPEF), which also includes the energy embedded in imported goods and services. The research is innovative in its pioneering combination of a Global Multi-Regional Input-Output (GMRIO) methodology with household budget surveys (HBS) and consumption to production sectorial bridge matrices to calculate TPEF at a small community level. Errekaleor, the largest off-grid alternative intentional community located in Basque Country, Spain, was taken as a case study. The results show, firstly, that alternative communal living can reduce energy consumption. In terms of the specific case study, even if direct residential energy consumption (4.46 MWh center dot cap-1 center dot yr-1) was shown to be 32 % and 15% higher in Errekaleor as compared with Basque and Spanish averages, a TPEF of 31.10 MWh center dot cap-1 center dot yr-1 per capita was determined for the community, 24 % and 14 % below the regional and national averages. Secondly, the relevance of indirect energy embedded in acquired goods and services in determining consumption-based energy use was shown. This accounts for 80.7 % of total consumption in Spain, 74.9 % in the Basque Country, and 66.3 % in Errekaleor. Within Errekaleor, individual arrangements impacted significantly, as people living in families have 33.5 % smaller energy footprints (28.45 MWh center dot cap-1 center dot yr-1) than individuals living alone (42.79 MWh center dot cap-1 center dot yr-1), who have a TPEF above the Basque average. Thus, the combination of GMRIO and HBS in the analyzed bottom-up case study made an important contribution in terms of clarifying the existing debate about the relative energy efficiency of alternative communities. The research was funded by the team “EKOPOL: TRANSITION PATHWAYS” recognised by the Basque Government (IT-1567-22) and the University of the Basque Country (GIC-18/22).

AbstractNumerous studies have illustrated how denser urban forms lead to smaller greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from passenger transport. Many of these studies have excluded aviation since the association between urban structure and air travel is not as intuitive as it is the case of ground travel. However, several recent studies have concluded that air travel is a significant contributor to the GHGs from passenger transport. Furthermore, even air travel habits depend heavily on lifestyles and socio-economic factors that are related to the urban form. Here we analyse the interactions between urban structure and different transportation modes and their GHG impacts in Finland. The study utilises the data from the Finnish Transportation Agency’s passenger traffic survey from May 2010 to May 2011, which includes over 12000 people and over 35000 trips. The survey is based on one-day travel diaries and also includes additional data on long-distance trips from a longer period. Methodologically, the study takes a traveller’s perspective to assess the GHG emissions from passenger transport. We found that (1) air travel breaks the pattern where GHG emissions decrease with increasing density of urban structures, and (2) in the metropolitan region there is a clear trade-off between car-ownership and air travel in the middle income class. The main policy implication of our study is that air travel must be included in GHG assessments and mitigation strategies targeting travel behaviour. In dense urban regions, the emissions of air travel have the potential to offset the gain from reduced private driving.

The purpose of this research is twofold: first, to evaluate how occupant behavior in a neutral environment influences the overall greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption of multi-family apartment buildings, and second: to establish which activities associated with housing companies produce the most greenhouse gas emissions. The research comprised of a multiple cases of housing companies dating from the late 1960s and located in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The studied housing companies represent the least energy efficient third of the Finnish residential building stock, approaching obligatory large scale refurbishments. The analysis is conducted in two phases with a so called hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) technique. Using the technique, both economic and metric consumption data are analyzed to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions generated by activities associated with housing. In line with previous research, the study identifies heating energy as the single most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. The results also show that the carbon load associated with housing activities makes up one third of an individual resident's overall carbon footprint. Contrary to often stated belief, the study indicates that occupant behavior has only limited effect on the energy consumption and, consequently, carbon emissions derived from housing, particularly when multi-family housing connected to district heating is concerned. However, apartment size seems to have a two-way impact, the smallest and the largest being the least energy efficient.

AbstractIn this study, we analyze holistically the residential energy consumption patterns and the overall housing energy requirements of urban and rural households in Finland. We study separately three of the most common types of housing—apartment buildings, row-/terraced houses, and detached houses—and include private and the communal building energy as well as the amount of energy consumed by free-time residences. With this study, we add perspective to the ongoing discussion on the sustainability of urban versus rural living and that of different housing types. We employ Household Budget Survey data from Statistics Finland and data from the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) to extract the actual energy purchases and convert them into energy units. Our key findings include five perspectives: (1) behavioral differences seem significant between different housing modes; (2) each housing mode appears to be less energy-intensive in rural areas; (3) including indirect energy purchases is essential when comparing different housing modes; (4) unit-of-analysis (m2, capita, household) selection strongly affects the results; and (5) the energy mixes vary significantly between the studied building types, changing from the predominance of non-renewables in apartment buildings to that of renewables in detached houses, which in turn has interesting carbon footprint implications.

In this paper, we analyze the relationships between Finnish household types and their consumption-based carbon footprints. We calculate footprints by combining expenditure data with life-cycle greenhouse gas emission intensities derived from an environmentally extended input–output model. By applying regression analysis, we explore the effects of expenditure, urbanity, and household size on total, direct, and indirect emissions. The separate analyses for direct and indirect GHGs provide insights, not previously found in the literature, on the relationship between urbanity and carbon footprints. Holding expenditure constant, a rural lifestyle seems to be related to the highest GHG emissions. However, keeping in mind that the absolute amount of indirect emissions is major to direct emissions from home energy and private driving, the less prominent or even reversed relationship between indirect emissions and urbanity is also worth noting. The existence of household size scale effects depends whether direct or indirect GHGs are explained. We demonstrate that in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of mitigation policies and their effects, not only the averages but the various patterns of direct and direct emissions must be kept in mind. This paper complements the earlier carbon footprint assessments from the same authors by providing a comprehensive statistical analysis.

The European Union (EU) has made climate change mitigation a high priority though a policy framework called “Clean Energy for all Europeans “. The concept of primary energy for energy resources plays a critical role in how different energy technologies appear in the context of this policy. This study shows how the calculation methodologies of primary energy content and primary energy factors pose a possible negative implication on the future development of geothermal energy when comparing against EU’s key energy policy targets for 2030. Following the current definitions of primary energy, geothermal utilization becomes the most inefficient resource in terms of primary energy use, thus contradicting key targets of increased energy efficiency in buildings and in the overall energy use of member states. We use a case study of Hellisheidi, an existing geothermal power plant in Iceland, to demonstrate how the standard primary energy factor for geothermal in EU energy policy is highly overestimated for efficient geothermal power plants. Moreover, we combine life cycle assessment and the commonly utilized combined heat and power production allocation methods to extract the non-renewable primary energy factor for geothermal and show how it is only a minimal fraction of the total primary energy factor for geothermal. The findings of the study apply to other geothermal plants within the coverage of the European Union’s energy policy, whether from high- or low-temperature geothermal resources. Geothermal has substantial potential to aid in achieving the key energy and climate targets. Still, with the current definition of the primary energy of geothermal resources, it may not reach the potential.