• Energy Research
• 12. Responsible consumption close
• GB close
• IT close
• University of Cambridge close

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, cultural change and collapse in prehistory, 2013–18), led by Caroline Malone (Queens University Belfast) has explored issues of environmental fragility and Neolithic social resilience and sustainability during the Holocene period in the Maltese Islands. This, the first volume of three, presents the palaeo-environmental story of early Maltese landscapes. The project employed a programme of high-resolution chronological and stratigraphic investigations of the valley systems on Malta and Gozo. Buried deposits extracted through coring and geoarchaeological study yielded rich and chronologically controlled data that allow an important new understanding of environmental change in the islands. The study combined AMS radiocarbon and OSL chronologies with detailed palynological, molluscan and geoarchaeological analyses. These enable environmental reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes and the changing resources exploited by the islanders between the seventh and second millennia bc. The interdisciplinary studies combined with excavated economic and environmental materials from archaeological sites allows Temple landscapes to examine the dramatic and damaging impacts made by the first farming communities on the islands’ soil and resources. The project reveals the remarkable resilience of the soil-vegetational system of the island landscapes, as well as the adaptations made by Neolithic communities to harness their productivity, in the face of climatic change and inexorable soil erosion. Neolithic people evidently understood how to maintain soil fertility and cope with the inherently unstable changing landscapes of Malta. In contrast, second millennium bc Bronze Age societies failed to adapt effectively to the long-term aridifying trend so clearly highlighted in the soil and vegetation record. This failure led to severe and irreversible erosion and very different and short-lived socio-economic systems across the Maltese islands.

Currently, fossil fuels make up a significant proportion of global energy demand and cause many concerns, such as increasing greenhouse gas emission. Therefore, there is a considerable need for cost-effective, facile and efficient processing of environmental-friendly energy harvesting and storage systems. Solar energy is one of the most promising energy sources that meet the energy demand. The silicon-based solar cells exhibit competitive power conversion efficiency and dominate the solar cell market in recent years. In contrast, organic solar cells (OSCs) have emerged as promising third-generation photovoltaic devices owing to their outstanding properties such as the potential of low-cost mass manufacturing, lightweight, mechanical flexibility and easy processability. Therefore, OSCs have received growing attention from the research community. For solar cell technologies, a smectic liquid crystal C8-BTBT was selected in Chapter 3 due to its unique thermal dynamic and crystal properties. A range of ternary OSCs with and without C8-BTBT loading at gradient weight fractions were thermally treated and fabricated. In addition, the assessment of fabricated OSCs on the photovoltaic characteristics reveals the evolution of various cell parameters with annealing temperature and C8-BTBT weight fractions. The cell with 5 wt% C8-BTBT loading exhibited the best performance after thermal annealing treatment at 120 oC. Furthermore, flexible hydrogel substrates were fabricated for flexible OSCs in Chapter 4. The PHEMA hydrogel films were optimised via adjusting photopolymerisation duration under UV light. Based on the fabricated PHEMA substrates, flexible OSCs were subsequently made, whose extracted device parameters showed comparable characteristics with those in Chapter 3. Moreover, PHEMA-based OSCs can be dissolved in different types of polar solvents, which is promising for realising sustainable and recyclable solar cells. For the development of energy storage devices, asymmetric carbon nanohorns were proposed as an active material to fabricate flexible solid‐state carbon wire (CW)‐based electrochemical supercapacitors (ss‐CWECs) which exhibited high power density and ultra‐low cutoff frequency. Based on microscopy and electrochemical characterisation, the fundamental reaction mechanism in polyvinyl‐based electrolyte system was elucidated in Chapter 5, as being associated with deprotonation reaction under the acid, base, and elevated temperature conditions. In Chapter 6, by using activated carbon, multi‐walled carbon nanotubes, and single‐wall carbon nanohorns as hybrid electrode materials (5:1:1), remarkable specific length capacitance of 48.76 mF cm−1 and charge-discharge stability (over 2000 times cycles) of ss‐CWECs were demonstrated, which are the highest reported to date. Furthermore, a high‐pass filter for eliminating ultra‐low electronic noise was demonstrated, enabling an optical Morse Code communication system to be operated. vThe collective works in this thesis demonstrate novel energy conversion and storage applications with the liquid crystal in OSCs and carbon nanoparticles in supercapacitors. These results provide a step forwards in the development of energy conversion and storage devices for a more efficient energy system.

The purpose of this research is to introduce a qualitative sustainability performance assessment framework for food supply networks, based on the perception of their key stakeholders’ upper management. Moreover, the paper provides industry insights by exemplifying the value of the proposed framework for the UK food industry. A critical review on the most acknowledged sustainability assessment methodologies and tools resulted in the synthesis of the proposed framework. An illustrative application follows, based on data from semi-structured interviews with C-level executives from key players of the UK poultry sector. The results demonstrate an easy-to-use approach, with a comprehensive and sharp outcome on supply chain sustainability performance assessment. Industry insights demonstrate an adequate sustainability performance with respect to the entire supply chain. A detailed view on different echelons reveals specific areas that could be improved, such as the environmental performance at both farming (production) and processing levels. This work extends the scope of current sustainability performance assessment tools by providing a tangible triple bottom-line overview, as well as echelon-specific and indicator-specific details, in a user-friendly, yet straightforward, way. UK food industry insights are valuable for practitioners and academics. The illustration is based exclusively on C-level executives’ viewpoint; thus, any generalization of the results should be considered to this effect. Supply chain stakeholders, policy-makers, and researchers could perform a quick and reliable supply network sustainability performance assessment.

Schrödinger [Schrödinger, E., 1944. What is Life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge] marvelled at how the organism is able to use metabolic energy to maintain and even increase its organisation, which could not be understood in terms of classical statistical thermodynamics. Ho [Ho, M.W., 1993. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, World Scientific, Singapore; Ho, M.W., 1998a. The Rainbow and the Worm, The Physics of Organisms, 2nd (enlarged) ed., reprinted 1999, 2001, 2003 (available online from ISIS website www.i-sis.org.uk)] outlined a novel "thermodynamics of organised complexity" based on a nested dynamical structure that enables the organism to maintain its organisation and simultaneously achieve non-equilibrium and equilibrium energy transfer at maximum efficiency. This thermodynamic model of the organism is reminiscent of the dynamical structure of steady state ecosystems identified by Ulanowicz [Ulanowicz, R.E., 1983. Identifying the structure of cycling in ecosystems. Math. Biosci. 65, 210-237; Ulanowicz, R.E., 2003. Some steps towards a central theory of ecosystem dynamics. Comput. Biol. Chem. 27, 523-530]. The healthy organism excels in maintaining its organisation and keeping away from thermodynamic equilibrium--death by another name--and in reproducing and providing for future generations. In those respects, it is the ideal sustainable system. We propose therefore to explore the common features between organisms and ecosystems, to see how far we can analyse sustainable systems in agriculture, ecology and economics as organisms, and to extract indicators of the system's health or sustainability. We find that looking at sustainable systems as organisms provides fresh insights on sustainability, and offers diagnostic criteria for sustainability that reflect the system's health. In the case of ecosystems, those diagnostic criteria of health translate into properties such as biodiversity and productivity, the richness of cycles, the efficiency of energy use and minimum dissipation. In the case of economic systems, they translate into space-time differentiation or organised heterogeneity, local autonomy and sufficiency at appropriate levels, reciprocity and equality of exchange, and most of all, balancing the exploitation of natural resources--real input into the system--against the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate itself.

This paper describes the nexus of energy justice, supply and security. It advances the case that energy justice is the relatively new concept in this triangle of issues and an area requiring research. There are three central tenets of energy justice: distributional, procedural and recognition justice. Each of these tenets figures at certain stages in the energy supply chain and as a consequence there is an effect on energy supply. An example of the wind energy sector in Denmark is presented which demonstrates how the application and promotion of energy justice can enable the growth of an industry supply chain. This in turn contributes to increased energy security and national economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a broad overview of the social and environmental costs and benefits of biofuels in Asia. The major factors that will determine the impacts of biofuels are: (1) their contribution to land-use change, (2) the feedstocks used, and (3) issues of technology and scale. Biofuels offer economic benefits, and in the right circumstances can reduce emissions and make a small contribution to energy security. Feedstocks that involve the conversion of agricultural land will affect food security and cause indirect land-use change, while those that replace forests, wetlands or natural grasslands will increase emissions and damage biodiversity. Biofuels from cellulose, algae or waste will avoid some of these problems, but come with their own set of uncertainties and risks. In order to ensure net societal benefits of biofuel production, governments, researchers, and companies will need to work together to carry out comprehensive assessments, map suitable and unsuitable areas, and define and apply standards relevant to the different circumstances of each country. The greatest benefits may come from feedstocks produced on a modest scale as co-products of smart technologies developed for phytoremediation, waste disposal and emissions reduction.

Climate change and an increased interest in renewable energy have resulted in a burgeoning wind energy sector. However, in the recent past, wind farms have faced resistance in acquiring permits due to concerns about their long-term effects on the local community. To understand the extent of these externalities, this study qualitatively meta-analyses four socio-economic impacts of interest, namely: house prices, tourism, catalytic effects of supply chain clustering, and social change. Geographically, the analysed reports include Europe, Canada and the US, and deductions are made for the EU. In order to bridge the gap of unavailability of primary data on the wind sector, relevant conclusions are drawn from other comparable sectors. Based on a rigorous review of primary qualitative research, this study concludes that offshore wind farms should be located more than 40 km away from the coast to eliminate risks of housing price devaluation and tourist activity reduction, which would directly affect the economic value of the region. In addition, the study found limited evidence to acknowledge the employment benefits in the local economy and social change in the community due to offshore wind farms. Monitoring mechanisms should be set up to prove or disprove the creation of local employment, crime and substance abuse. Furthermore, the study finds that adequate planning and management can ensure better socioeconomic outcomes in the community. Further research is recommended for the specific impact of overhead transmission lines and substations on property values and tourism.

Emerging energy storage systems based on abundant and cost-effective materials are key to overcome the global energy and climate crisis of the 21st century.