• Energy Research
• 13. Climate action close
• 14. Life underwater close
• Transport Research close

Science-based, multinational management of the Baltic Sea offers lessons on amelioration of highly disturbed marine ecosystems.

This paper evaluates how policy shaped the emergence of electric mobility in three countries, Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, between 2010 and 2015. Whereas previous studies have looked at the effects of separate policy instruments, this paper gives insights in the interaction effects of instruments on the diffusion of battery electric cars between five policy areas. Based on analysis of synergetic, contradictory and pre-conditional effects, we find that an effective policy mix includes: fiscal incentives that mirror the actual carbon footprint of the respective vehicles; non-fiscal demand-side incentives; centrally financed and/or coordinated charging infrastructure; clarity regarding the choice of technology that will be supported. Moreover, development of a domestic, e-mobility-related industry and a high share of renewable energy strengthens the legitimization of e-mobility support. The findings help designing policy mixes in the transition to electric mobility.

The high growth of the automotive industry reveals the very bright future of this technology and its high penetration effects on the human society. No doubt that the random and volatile charging demand of these devices would affect the power grid optimal operation and scheduling which may be regarded as a new challenge. Therefore, this paper investigates the stochastic scheduling of hybrid AC/DC microgrids considering the plugin hybrid electric vehicles charging demands, distributed all over the grid. Three different charging patterns, called coordinated, uncoordinated and smart charging models with different characteristics for the charger type, capacity and market share are proposed. Moreover, different types of renewable energy sources including wind turbine, solar panel and fuel cell are modeled and considered in the scheduling process of the hybrid microgrid. In order to mitigate the charging effects of electric vehicles on the hybrid AC–DC microgrid operation, some remotely switches are considered in the system which make it possible for changing the topology and power flow way. In order to model the uncertainty effects, a data-driven framework based on point estimate method and support vector machine is developed. This would make it possible to extract out the standard deviation value of the uncertain parameters and reflect their impacts on the microgrid operation problem through the limited concentration points. A novel evolving solution based on flower pollination algorithm is also proposed to solve the problem optimally. An IEEE standard test system is used as the hybrid AC/DC microgrid case study to assess the performance of proposed model.

In the coming decades, environmental change like warming and acidification will affect life in the ocean. While data on single stressor effects on fish are accumulating rapidly, we still know relatively little about interactive effects of multiple drivers. Of particular concern in this context are the early life stages of fish, for which direct effects of increased CO2 on growth and development have been observed. Whether these effects are further modified by elevated temperature was investigated here for the larvae of Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus), a commercially important fish species. Over a period of 32 days, larval survival, growth in size and weight, and instantaneous growth rate were assessed in a crossed experimental design of two temperatures (10°C and 12°C) with two CO2 levels (400 μatm and 900 μatm CO2) at food levels mimicking natural levels using natural prey. Elevated temperature alone led to increased swimming activity, as well as decreased survival and instantaneous growth rate (Gi). The comparatively high sensitivity to elevated temperature in this study may have been influenced by low food levels offered to the larvae. Larval size, Gi and swimming activity were not affected by CO2, indicating tolerance of this species to projected "end of the century" CO2 levels. A synergistic effect of elevated temperature and CO2 was found for larval weight, where no effect of elevated CO2 concentrations was detected in the 12°C treatment, but a negative CO2 effect was found in the 10°C treatment. Contrasting CO2 effects were found for survival between the two temperatures. Under ambient CO2 conditions survival was increased at 12°C compared to 10°C. In general, CO2 effects were minor and considered negligible compared to the effect of temperature under these mimicked natural food conditions. These findings emphasize the need to include biotic factors such as energy supply via prey availability in future studies on interactive effects of multiple stressors.

The Global concern is moving toward making a revolution in favor of exploitation of renewable energy in order to improve environment conditions, limit emissions and minimizes consumption of non-renewable resources within the planet. In this context, it is necessary to focus on the transport sector as it contributes of at least 30% of the total primary energy consumption. Therefore, a set of rules must be developed to maintain economic, environmental and social sustainability to address the problems so as not to increase their severity and these cannot be done unless there are joint measures and regulations from governments, companies, manufacturers and users. Unfortunately, the Jordanian transport system mostly depend on the individual transport which supported by cars, and that because of the weak role played by the public transport sector, especially at the capital, Amman. Buying hybrid cars (internal combustion engine + electric motor) and Electrical Vehicles (EV), in the past few years in Jordan is increasing, which is compatible with the global trend to use Electrical Vehicles (EV) instead of Internal Combustion Engine vehicles (ICE) powered by fossil fuels, this issue will have a direct and indirect impact on gas stations companies, also it will have direct impact on labor sector and the current car industry since electric charging stations as well as EV manufacturing is not labor intensive. The main purpose of the study is to show how much it is necessary now to start theoretical assumptions through studying the expected annual increase in passenger cars and its impact on sustainability and predicting the future fuel consumption and emissions and compare them with the base situation.

We present findings from a geotechnical survey for a gravity-based Wave Energy Converter (WEC) to be installed in King Island, Tasmania. The goal of this work was to assess the deployment location for a 200 kW Oscillating Water Column (OWC) and to identify possible challenges for the foundation of the structure to make it Australia’s first operational offshore OWC for a remote offshore island. The proposed location for this OWC is the southeast coast of King Island, Tasmania, approximately in a depth of ~5.5 m LAT. The survey included sub-bottom profiling, sediment cores, surficial sediment strength by penetrometer drops, seabed imagery, as well as long-term deployment (>6 months) of pressure sondes and an acoustic wave current profiler (AWAC). Our findings demonstrate that the WEC can be installed in the proposed location with significant wave height Hs ~1–1.5 m and peak period Tp of 12–14 s, and that the site exhibits sufficient sand coverage and quasisteady bearing capacity. The period between the survey and prospective deployment is only one year, demonstrating the efficiency of the survey methods (in particular, the use of the penetrometer) and OWC design but also the suitability of the candidate site for this device design.