• Energy Research
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<h3>Project Overview</h3> <p>Jurisdictional boundaries of governmental agencies often do not align with the geographic or social boundaries of the policy issues they are tasked with addressing. This spatial mismatch is especially common in relation to natural resources and the environment. Where it occurs, achievement of policy goals may require coordination across jurisdictions, which can lead to mutual benefits. Yet, governmental agencies may view coordination as costly or as leading to a loss of autonomy. This project examined coordination decisions made by local level governmental agencies in California, as they formed Groundwater Sustainability Agencies (GSAs) and subsequently coordinated development of their first groundwater sustainability plans (GSPs) under California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The project addresses the question of how agencies make decisions and manage interactions when under a coordination mandate that allots agencies the discretion to decide how to coordinate. More specifically, it investigates:<ol><li>What factors influence decisions regarding the geographic extent of and parties involved in development of new formal agencies for groundwater management,</li><li>How do concerns about the potential risks of coordination affect the choice of coordination mechanisms,</li><li>How does the structure of agency interactions affect their achievement of the objectives of the coordination mandate, and</li><li>How do agencies make sense of a coordination mandate and how does that sense-making process influence the decisions agencies make when deciding how to respond to the mandate?</li></ol></p> <h3>Data Collection Overview</h3> <p>Data were collected between January 2018 and May 2020. The methods for data collection varied by data type.<ul><li>Secondary data on the physical, social, and institutional characteristics of groundwater basins were collected from California Department of Water Resources datasets, the American Community Survey, and the National Land Use Database.</li><li>Data on GSA formation and copies of GSPs and Coordination Agreements were obtained from the California’s SGMA Portal Website (https://sgma.water.ca.gov/portal/)</li><li>Meeting minutes and other documentation were obtained from the respective websites of local-level agencies that formed GSAs.</li><li>Interviews were conducted with representatives from 67 groundwater sustainability agencies. Interviewees spanned 17 of the 19 basins and 38 of the 44 groundwater sustainability plans produced. Interviewees were identified based on formal GSA contact information and selected based on formal notices to produce a GSP. Recruitment sought to interview representatives from least one GSA from each GSP group.</li><li>Participant observation was undertaken of more than 58 public meetings (in person, virtually, or reviewing recordings).</li></ul></p> <h3>Shared Data Organization</h3> <p>The shared data is organized into three folders. A GIS folder contains 16 relevant data files. An interview transcripts folder contains 52 de-identified transcripts from the interviews that were recorded and transcribed. Some interviewees did not agree to recording and transcription of the interviews, thus data from those interviews are not available. A tabular data folder contains 3 spreadsheet workbooks. These include a spreadsheet documenting coordination concerns at the basin-level; a spreadsheet documenting organizational forms and institutions adopted at the basin-level; and a spreadsheet documenting coordination outcomes at the basin-level. Each spreadsheet includes a copy of the codebook used in analyzing the data. This data project also includes 6 documentation files: a GIS metadata workbook, an interview catalog, an interview consent form, a redaction protocol, this data narrative, and an administrative README file.</p> <h3>Data Overview</h3> <p>The research involved a mixed-methods approach that combines information on agencies; the physical, social, and institutional characteristics of groundwater basins and the agencies located within them; formal filings; agreements; and plans developed by agencies; meeting minutes; interview data; and data from participant observation.</p>

Abstract In this article, we investigate the intergenerational transmission of sustainable consumption practices. Whereas previous studies have used self-reported attitudes and behaviour, this study uses data on actual energy consumption for space-heating and hot water combined with extensive panel data from Danish administrative registers. The paper shows significant intergenerational correlations between the energy consumption patterns of adults and their mothers, also when controlling for the energy consumption of the mother-in-law, where possible. Furthermore, it shows that the intergenerational correlation is slightly stronger for adults with lower income levels. These results suggest that energy consumption practices are shared and reproduced within the family. Following theories of practice, the intergenerational similarities in energy consumption practices refer to bodily learned practices that are indirectly transmitted and negotiated through family relations. In this way, these findings also contribute to a better understanding of how practical understanding regarding how to perform practices is transmitted within more ordinary aspects of consumption that play a less obvious role in distinction. To ensure more sustainable consumption practices in the future, this paper points to the importance of the role of family relations and the transmission of embodied practices.

The world, society and education are constantly evolving, and to respond to these changes, the main governmental institutions have been proposing different global strategies to focus efforts in the same direction. Currently, the United Nations and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) have presented a series of indicators that could help to minimise the environmental, economic and social instability we are experiencing. In this sense, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has been described as a fundamental factor. Specifically, in previous work, we argued that physical education (PE) could be a good tool to contribute to SDGs. Based on this, no research analysing the voices of Physical Education Teachers (PET) on how this contribution could be made has been identified in previous literature. Therefore, the objectives of this research are: (1) to analyse the voices and opinions of active PETs in terms of the knowledge they have about Sustainable Development (SD); (2) to determine their opinions about the contribution that PE could make to SDGs; and finally, (3) to identify the challenges and limitations of pedagogical action of SD in PE. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis through a semi-structured interview with 41 active PETs was carried out. The main findings will be presented and discussed around four themes: (a) agreement on the concept of sustainability; (b) PE can contribute to the achievement of SDGs; (c) ambiguity in applying SDGs to PE lessons; and (d) teachers’ constraints on how to implement SDGs in PE. It seems to indicate that PETs do not have a multidimensional vision of sustainable development. While they recognise the potential of PE to contribute to SDGs through awareness raising and student learning, they point to its pedagogical and formative constraints as the main barriers to being able to contribute. They pointed to a lack of knowledge on how to do so, guidelines on how to integrate ESD, lack of involvement, shortage of time or resources in school physical education.

Ethylene oxide production process is one of the highest energy consumers in chemical industry, and therefore even a slight improvement in its overall efficiency can have a significant impact on the sustainability of the process. Efficiency improvement can be carried out using the exergy-aided pinch analysis outlined in this paper. The overall exergy loss distribution in different unit operations of an ethylene oxide process was first evaluated and mapped out in the form of “visualized exergetic process flowsheet”. An initial analysis of the four main functional blocks of the process showed that the exothermic reaction block contained the largest exergy loss (6043 and 428 kJ/kg of internal and external losses, respectively) which can be reduced by isothermal mixing, as well as increasing reaction temperature and reduction in pressure drop. The absorption block was also estimated to have the second highest contribution with total exergy losses of 3640 kJ/kg which were mainly due to the cooling column. These losses were then recommended to be reduced by improvements in the concentration and temperature gradients along the tower. Following the block-wise analysis, exergy analysis was then carried out for individual unit operations in each block to pinpoint the main sources of thermal exergetic inefficiency. Thermal solutions to reduce losses were also proposed in accordance with the identified sources of inefficiency, leading to a comprehensive list of cold and hot process streams that could be introduced to reduce losses. Finally, pinch analysis was brought into action to estimate the minimum energy requirements, to select utilities, and to design heat exchanger network. Thus, the methodology used in this work took advantage of both exergy and pinch analyses. The combined thermal-exergy-based pinch approach helped to set energy targets so that all the thermal possible solutions supported by exergy analysis were considered, preventing exclusion of any hot or cold process stream with high potential for heat integration during pinch analysis. Results indicated that the minimum cold utility requirement could be reduced from 601.64 MW (obtained via conventional pinch analysis) to 577.82 MW through screening of streams by the combined methodology.

Due to the increasing awareness of climate change, depletion of natural resources, and increasing world population, companies in the agri-food sector need to redesign their existing supply chains and take into account both the economic and environmental impact of their operations. In practice not all the required information is available in advance due to various sources of uncertainty in agri-food supply chains. In this research a multi-objective two-stage stochastic programming model is proposed to analyse and evaluate the economic and environmental impacts to account for uncertainty in agri-food supply chains. A mushroom supply chain in the Netherlands is presented as an illustrative case study. Optimal production planning decisions calculated with a two-stage stochastic programming model are compared with the results of an equivalent deterministic model. The results of the optimizations show that accounting for stochasticity in important model parameters can reduce the difference between expected and realized economic performance by approximately 4% on average. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that including stochastic model parameters can reduce the environmental impact without compromising the current economic performance. Given the assumptions in the setup of the case study and the available information, it is concluded that applying a 2-stage stochastic programming approach for production planning decisions can lead to improved economic and environmental performance in an agri-food supply chain. New findings in real-life case studies are needed to get profound insights and understanding on the impact of uncertainty on production planning decisions in sustainable agri-food supply chains.

Sustainability is commonly assessed along environmental, societal, economic and technological dimensions. A crucial aspect of sustainability is that inter-generational equality must be ensured. This requires that sustainability is attained in the here and now as well as into the future. Therefore, what is perceived as 'sustainable' changes as a function of societal opinion and technological and scientific progress. A concept that describes the ability of systems to change is adaptive capacity. Literature suggests that the ability of systems to adapt is an integral part of sustainable development. This paper demonstrates that indicators measuring adaptive capacity are underrepresented in current urban water sustainability studies. Furthermore, it is discussed under which sustainability dimensions adaptive capacity indicators are lacking and why. Of the >90 indicators analysed, only nine are adaptive capacity indicators, of which six are socio-cultural, two technological, one economical and none environmental. This infrequent use of adaptive capacity indicators in sustainability assessments led to the conclusion that the challenge of dynamic and uncertain urban water systems is, with the exception of the socio-cultural dimension, not yet sufficiently reflected in the application of urban water sustainability indicators. This raises concerns about the progress towards urban water systems that can transform as a response variation and change. Therefore, research should focus on developing methods and indicators that can define, evaluate and quantify adaptive capacity under the economic, environmental and technical dimension of sustainability. Furthermore, it should be evaluated whether sustainability frameworks that focus on the control processes of urban water systems are more suitable for measuring adaptive capacity, than the assessments along environmental, economic, socio-cultural and technological dimensions.

Abstract This work assesses the impacts of aggressive driving behavior on pollutants emissions and energy consumption at a city level. Furthermore, it performs an economic analysis considering the potential avoided emissions and fuel savings and discusses potential policy measures to address this topic. The results showed that aggressive driving significantly impacts energy consumption and emissions, with energy consumption increasing by more than ∼200% and emissions by 330% for aggressive driving compared to non-aggressive driving (in MJ/km and in g/km, respectively). This increment was found to be even higher for diesel vehicles than for gasoline vehicles. On the contrary, gasoline vehicles showed higher percentages of increase for most emissions (CO, NOx and NO). Results also revealed that aggressive driving impacts are higher for local streets when examining the city level. Moreover, the economic analysis showed that significant cost reductions may be achieved by avoiding aggressive driving, reaching up to 52.5 k€ on a daily basis. In conclusion, this study is of particular relevance to policy makers and urban planners, enabling to obtain a comprehensive overview of the impacts of aggressive driving behaviors at a city level and providing new insights to perform further developments and to assess the feasibility of the implementation of policy measures.

Abstract Portugal’s performance concerning the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) strategy, with particular focus on perspectives for the Northern Region based on the current status of integrated municipal waste management systems in that region, was evaluated. Legal documents, official reports and the market were analyzed. The 2015 national installed capacity of waste treatment technologies, from which the high calorific value fraction (HCVF) for RDF production is obtained, is not far from what was predicted for 2013. However, only around 11% of the HCVF had such destiny and the amount of effectively produced RDF was only 30% of the material sent to RDF production (around 30 kt). In Northern Portugal, no RDF production plant was in operation in 2015; the amount of HCVF was estimated to range from 105 to 204 kt for 2015 and around 2.4 times more is expected in 2020. The strategy laydown for RDF failed so far, and thus, low diversion of waste from landfills is observed, mostly due to low landfill taxes and low HCVF quality, resulting in RDF being non-competitive with the imported higher quality product from countries with very high landfilling fees. Moreover, co-incineration and dedicated recovery solutions are scarce. In the Northern region, the HCVF may be treated in the existing municipal waste incinerator or the RDF might be recovered in new dedicated plants, receiving also non-hazardous waste fractions from other origin. Overall, to ensure a sustainable municipal waste management, the intensification of the reuse, preparation for reuse and recycling of waste components from source segregated collection must be significantly promoted.

The olive oil mill wastewater (OMW) is a by-product (with a high organic load) derived from the production of the olive oil. The OMW steam reforming (OMWSR) process was studied herein, aiming to decrease the environmental damage of such effluents; simultaneously, the waste is economically and energetically valorized with the H-2 production. Several Ni-containing catalysts were prepared and tested to compare their performances for the OMWSR using a synthetic OMW effluent; still, stability tests were also carried out. The materials were extensively characterized: thermogravimetric analysis, temperature programmed oxidation/reduction, temperature-programmed desorption of CO2/NH3, chemisorption of H-2, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry and physical adsorption-desorption of N-2 at-196 & DEG;C. Amongst the materials tested, the Ni-Ru/SiO2 sample stood out, exhibiting high catalytic performance: at 400 & DEG;C, the H-2 yield (> 8 mol(H2)& BULL;mol(OMW)(-1)) and conversion of total organic carbon (asymptotic to 75%) were high during all the 24 h of the long-term test, with only a small deactivation being noticed.