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Cities are progressively heightening their climate aspirations to curtail urban carbon emis- sions and establish a future where economies and communities can flourish within the Earth’s eco- logical limits. Consequently, numerous climate initiatives are being launched to control urban car- bon emissions, targeting various sectors, including transport, residential, agricultural, and energy. However, recent scientific literature underscores the disproportionate distribution of climate poli- cies. While cities in the Global North have witnessed several initiatives to combat climate change, cities in the Global South remain uncovered and highly vulnerable to climate hazards. To address this disparity, we employed the Balanced Iterative Reducing and Clustering using the Hierarchies (BRICH) algorithm to cluster cities from diverse geographical areas that exhibit comparable socio- economic profiles. This clustering strives to foster enhanced cooperation and collaboration among cities globally, with the goal of addressing climate change in a comprehensive manner. In summary, we identified similarities, pa􏰀erns, and clusters among peer cities, enabling mutual and generaliza- ble learning among worldwide peer-cities regarding urban climate policy exchange. This exchange occurs through three approaches: (i) inner-mutual learning, (ii) cross-mutual learning, and (iii) outer-mutual learning. Our findings mark a pivotal stride towards a􏰀aining worldwide climate ob- jectives through a shared responsibility approach. Furthermore, they provide preliminary insights into the implementation of “urban climate policy exchange” among peer cities on a global scale.

Dynamic pressure measurements are introduced as a powerful tool to detected filter failures at early stage. Filter failures such as leakages and blockages can be detected during back pressure recleaning pulses. High frequency sensors enable the recording of the recleaning pressure pulse. Patchy cleaning and depth filtration can be detected much faster with dynamic pressure measurements than with differential pressure measurements. Parameters derived from dynamic pressure data can be observed over time and compared with reference data. The method complements conventional pressure difference measurements and is applied at a hot gas filter that implements coupled pressure pulse (CPP) technology. Proceedings of the 20th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 18-22 June 2012, Milan, Italy, pp. 837-843

With an increasing share of regenerative wind and solar energy in electricity supply, the aspect of load flexibility will gain importance, i.e. there is an increasing need for buffer capacities and / or power plants must be able to react more flexibly to changes of the demand. As an alternative or in addition to the new construction of peak­load power plants (pump storage systems, gas power plants), load-flexible dust burner technologies can be used in existing incinerators to increase the load flexibility and the fuel flexibility when using especially local regenerative fuel sources. Flexibility of the burner concept means an increase in changing fuel composition and non-stationary operation, which may cause changes of the combustion behavior and, hence, of the emission behavior. Flexibility in fuel sources changes the combustion and emission behavior, too, especially with regard to low rank fuels with high ash contents containing chlorine and alkali species. To control these non-stationary processes in the burner and downstream boiler area for an efficient operation, contact-free optical measurement methods are applied in addition to the measurement systems existing in the furnace chamber and furthermore control methods based on computational intelligence. Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1334-1337

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are a key component of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. WSN nodes are in general battery-powered, thereby and efficient usage of their energy budget is of paramount importance to avoid performance degradation in IoT applications. To this end, this chapter proposes techniques to manage the WSN nodes’ power consumption. The aim of the first technique is to minimize the transmitted power for a given quality of service requirement at the receiver side. To this end, a power control is considered at each WSN node as well as the use of multiple distributed access points at the receiver side. The second technique to reduce the WSN energy consumption is energy harvesting (EH). Namely, the use of artificial light EH is considered to extend the WSN lifetime. Thus, an experimental setup based on a photovoltaic cell, a boost converter and a commercial WSN node is presented. It is shown that under certain settings it is possible to extend the WSN node’s lifetime without bound, when the transmission time period is above a certain threshold.

The present study deals with the use of renewable energy sources (RES) for biofuel production in addition to the power derived from hydroelectric and heat produced by district heating plants. It follows and integrates the main aim to reduce the use of fossil fuels in the considered study area according to the Directive Europe 2020. The possibility to address animal manure and other local biomass to the biogas yield with subsequent upgrading to biomethane was investigated, starting from the production up to the end use. The proposed solution implies the realization of one centralized biogas plant coupled with the upgrading section and one filling station. Details were deepen in order to improve the economic sustainability of the plant, the direct involvement of farmers in the management company and the acceptance level from the residents. Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 2099-2101

SUSTAGRI4.0 will bring digital and marketing skills to small-scale farmers and agribusiness owners towards a sustainable and community-driven future. SUSTAGRI4.0 core aim is to promote a more sustainable agriculture and support sustainable agriculture businesses in their transition to Agriculture 4.0. This report, comprised from three clusters, the highlighting results of the study, focusing on the professional skills of the future European farming community build on the cornerstones of sustainability, digitalization, and entrepreneurship: Best practices at consortium level; digital survey; focus groups. The country analysis is based on critical research of relevant open sources, including, inter alia, data from national and regional/municipal organizations, law enforcement practice, formal education curriculum, scientific publications and NGOs reports. These desk studies have been of high importance for us, balancing academic findings, correcting views and seriously expanding our understanding of youth issues and related processes of digitalization. Moreover, they have served as a pool for ideas, inspiration and practical models for partner organizations [Cluster I]. Digital Survey recap the desk and case studies, providing valuable insights from our target groups – both from youth and stakeholders and enriching us with clarifying first-hand knowledge for preparing the next steps of our project [Cluster II]. Development of focus groups: Research on local producers & sustainable agricultural business owners and VET. After finishing the research phase (national level) has been completed, a number of best practices has been identified and described in order to compare official data and statistics with real implementation of abovementioned tools [Cluster III]

The energy yield of PV systems with horizontal single-axis tracking and bifacial panels was calculated using BIGEYE. BIGEYE is a versatile code developed at ECN part of TNO to calculate the yield of bifacial PV. Comparison to recent measured data with the BIFOROT set-up at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences showed very good agreement. Our BIGEYE results show that the bifacial energy gain and the tracking gain are mostly additive, making the combination of bifacial panels and tracking a very attractive option. For two different locations, Doha and Amsterdam, increases of energy yield in the order of 25% compared to monofacial, fixed tilt systems are possible at relatively modest ground cover values. 35th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1573-1577

Upgrading of bio-oils for using them as transport fuel or as source for chemicals is a challenging task that has recently attracted a lot of attention. One of the most studied approaches in literature is hydrodeoxygenation, which is also the topic of this work. The light phase of a pyrolysis oil, produced in the bioliq® pilot plant in Karlsruhe, was treated with hydrogen (80 bar, pressure at room temperature) under mild hydrotreating conditions (250°C) in the presence of a catalyst. Different nickel-based catalysts were employed and were compared to Ru/C as benchmark. Nickel on different high surface area supports showed similar catalytic performance with inferior hydrogenation performance compared to Ru/C. Extensive quantitative 1H-NMR analysis was used for observing variations in the concentration of specific molecular functional groups in the products, while the distribution of the main elements (C, H, O) in the different phases was determined by elemental analysis and Karl Fischer titration. 1H-NMR and elemental analysis showed that the produced oil has less oxygen content respect to the original bio-oil. This is not only due to the hydrotreating reaction but also to the repartition of apolar compounds in the oil phase and of more polar ones in the aqueous phase. Proceedings of the 22nd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 23-26 June 2014, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 1164-1170

This paper models and compares the energy yield to be expected from bifacial 2-terminal (2T) and 4-terminal (4T) hybrid perovskite/crystalline silicon tandem modules. Following the work by Asadpour et al. the comparison includes 2T tandem cells employing a thick perovskite absorber layer with standard band gap, which in monofacial operation have significant mismatch of short circuit currents of top and bottom cell, and therefore low efficiency. The perovskite stack properties are taken from the current Solliance high-performance semi-transparent perovskite cells, and the c-Si model represents current high-efficiency industrial nPERT cells. As shown by Asadpour et al., the combination of thick absorber and standard band gap with bifacial operation is a promising approach for 2T bfiacial tandem modules, resulting in higher performance than the c-Si bottom cells. We find that such a 2T bifacial tandem module should be able to outperform even an optimized 2T module with wide band gap perovskite. Additionally, employing a planar c-Si front side in combination with textured module glass can potentially perform nearly as well as employing a textured c-Si front side. These results support the feasibility of important simplifications for production of 2T tandem modules, as long as these will be operated bifacially. The dependence of energy yield of 2T bifacial tandems on albedo is qualitatively different from that of 4T and single junction c-Si bifacial modules. This reduces the competitiveness of 2T bifacial tandems, compared to 4T and SJ c-Si, with increase of the albedo of the environment. 35th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 676-680