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The complexity of carbon reduction and economic sustainability is significantly complicated by competing aspects of socioeconomic practices as well as legislative, regulatory, and scientific requirements and protocols. An easy to read and understand guide, Sioshansi, along with an international group of contributors, moves through the maze of carbon reduction methods and technologies, providing steps and insights to meet carbon reduction requirements and maintaining the health and welfare of the firm. The book’s three part treatment is based on a clear and rigorous exposition of a wide range of options to reduce the carbon footprint Part 1 of the book, Challenge of Sustainability, examines the fundamental drivers...
This workshop is part of a broader research project aimed at better understanding how communities can engage in the process of wind energy development. The research is funded through a National Science Foundation grant (#SES 0724672) to Roopali Phadke at Macalester College. This report was prepared by a research team from Macalester College. Throughout the day of the workshop, the research team collected demographic data about participants, gauged their familiarity with wind energy, and elicited their perceptions about landscape impacts. This was done through the use of interactive keypad polling, photographic analysis within focus groups, open-ended writing exercises and a final evaluation. The data were brought...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Wind, electricity, energy, siting, wind energy
Biomass remains a key energy source for several billion people living in developing countries, and the production of liquid biofuels for transportation is growing rapidly. However, both traditional biomass energy and crop-based biofuels technologies have negative environmental and social impacts. The overall research challenge for bioenergy is to develop the technologies to produce useful products at low costs while minimizing the use of scarce resources such as arable land and water. This requires substantial advancements in modern biomass power generation and the success of liquid biofuel technologies that permit the use of lignocellulosic feedstocks or possibly algae. With such technologies, biomass resources...
The generation of electricity modifies the physical environment of the globe more than any other industrial activity. Indeed, the industry may already create more long-term economic costs than benefits in terms of associated environmental repercussions. This negative economic equation could become even worse unless long-term and programmed investments into energy supply and conservation strategies are made with proper care for all indentifiable environmental effects. The present publiclyowned electricity industry in the UK has an environmental track record that is patchy but generally unsatisfactory, despite some improvements in recent years. The key issue facing the privatized industry is how comprehensive and...
Woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in Alberta are classified as endangered and apparently have declined. Disturbance from petroleum exploration has been implicated as a possible cause, so we constructed a simple model to estimate the energy costs of multiple encounters with disturbance (i.e., loud noise). Our objective was to estimate if woodland caribou in northeastern Alberta have been exposed to enough disturbance from 1988 to 1993 to cause winter mass loss to exceed either (i) 15% autumn mass or (ii) 20% autumn mass. A single disturbance event costs caribou 3.46-5.81 MJ. Caribou would have to encounter (i) 20-34 (mean = 27) disturbance events to lose >15% mass over winter and (ii) 41-137 (mean = 89)...
In contrast to Europe and North America, air pollution in Asia is increasing rapidly, resulting in both local air quality problems and higher acidic depositions. In 1989, an east-west group of scientists initiated a multi-institutional research project on Acid Rain and Emissions Reduction in Asia, funded for the past two years by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Phase I, covering 23 countries of Asia, focussed on the development of PC-based software called the Regional Air Pollution INformation and Simulation Model (RAINS-ASIA). A 90-region Regional Energy Scenario Generator was developed to create alternative energy/emission scenarios through the year 2020. A long-range atmospheric transport model...
Guiding a transition to low carbon electricity requires a good understanding of the substitution of old by new technologies in the electricity industry. With the aim of explaining historical change from coal to gas in the British electricity industry, we develop a formal model of technological change, where energy technologies diffuse through the construction of new power plants. We considered two model versions: with rational and boundedly rational investors. In each model version, we look at the causal relations between price and output setting mechanisms, fuel and labour use, and investment decisions for different institutional arrangements. We quantify model parameters on data for the United Kingdom. We find...
During the last years, the preservation of the atmospheric environment has played an increasingly important role in society. The Diesel engine can be considered an environmentally friendly engine because of its low consumption and the subsequent carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction. However, in the near future it will face strong restrictive emission standards, which demand that the current nitrogen oxides (NOx) and soot emissions are halved. To comply with these restrictions new combustion concepts are emerging, such as PCCI (premixed charge compression ignition), in which the fuel burns in premixed conditions. Combustion noise is thus deteriorated and consequently end-users could be reluctant to drive vehicles...
This paper estimates the extra costs of drilling for oil and gas on federal land as compared to private land in the Wyoming Checkerboard. The Checkerboard is a center of U.S. oil and gas activity in which square-mile sections of property alternate between federal and private ownership as originally established by the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864. This land ownership pattern is used as an experimental control that may be used to identify differences in drilling cost on federal and private land. Estimates presented suggest that average drilling costs per well are about $200,000 higher on federal property than on private property. This difference is attributed to more stringent enforcement of environmental...
Rising global demand for energy, high energy prices, climate change, and the threat of terrorism all point to the need for greater energy efficiency and conservation in the United States. While technological innovation is plainly needed, our laws and institutional arrangements must also play an important role. The United States has scores of legal and policy tools from which to choose to improve energy efficiency and curb energy consumption. This Article, which grows out of a Spring 2006 seminar at theWidener University School of Law, evaluates a handful of these tools: transit-oriented development; fuel taxation; real-time pricing for electricity use; public benefit funds; improving the efficiency of existing residential...
Rising global demand for energy, high energy prices, climate change, and the threat of terrorism all point to the need for greater energy efficiency and conservation in the United States. While technological innovation is plainly needed, our laws and institutional arrangements must also play an important role. The United States has scores of legal and policy tools from which to choose to improve energy efficiency and curb energy consumption. This Article, which grows out of a Spring 2006 seminar at theWidener University School of Law, evaluates a handful of these tools: transit-oriented development; fuel taxation; real-time pricing for electricity use; public benefit funds; improving the efficiency of existing residential...
This book contains contributions by expert scientists and engineers on all of the sources of energy available to us now and in the near future that will enable us to take the energy decisions needed for sustaining development and dealing with climate change.
The National Toxics Network (NTN) calls on federal and state governments to implement a moratorium on the use of hydraulic drilling and fracturing chemicals (‘fracking chemicals’) used in the hydraulic drilling and fracturing of coal gas seams and gas shale extraction, until the fracking chemicals have been fully assessed for their health and environmental hazards by the industrial chemicals regulator, the National Industrial Chemical Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS). NTN’s assessment has found that only 2 out of the 23 most commonly used fracking chemicals in Australia have been assessed by NICNAS. Neither of these 2 chemicals have been specifically assessed for their use in hydraulic drilling and fracking.
This paper provides an assessment of the large-scale implementation of distributed solar photovoltaics in Wisconsin with regard to its interaction with the utility grid, economics of varying levels of high penetration, and displaced emissions. These assessment factors are quantified using simulations with measured hourly solar radiation and weather data from the National Solar Radiation Database as primary inputs. Hourly utility load data for each electric utility in Wisconsin for a complete year were used in combination with the simulated PV output to quantify the impacts of high penetration of distributed PV on the aggregate Wisconsin electric utility load. As the penetration rate of distributed PV systems increases,...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Electricity, Photovoltaics, Solar
Agricultural residues are abundantly available in energy deficient developing countries. Many of the agricultural residues are considered as waste, and their energy potential has not been realized in energy recovery schemes. Coutilization of agricultural residues in existing coal fired power plants can help in producing clean energy, disposing of waste, and increasing the income of the rural population. Sheameal, cotton stalk, sugar cane bagasse, and wood chips were cofired with coal in 5, 10, and 15% thermal fractions in a 20 kW down-fired combustor. The combustion behavior of the blends of biomass-coal was examined. It was found that agricultural residues can be used as a potential substitute fuel and can help...
Demand response (DR) programs have recently become popular means of mitigating excessive claims on regional electricity networks and providing more reliable access to electric power. Many countries have experimented with DR pilot programs and some are beginning to incorporate similar schemes as permanent elements of the electricity sector. However, DR remains an experimental technique in much of the world as programs frequently fail to meet their goals and reach their potential. This paper examines the central structural and behavioral obstacles to success of DR programs and outlines some potential solutions which could greatly improve the functionality and success of such programs in the future.
For grading different types of renewable energy based electricity generation systems, a figure of merit has been proposed and evaluated. The figure of merit has been obtained by analyzing total energy utilization in constructing and installing the systems and by their respective electricity generation. The gross carbon emission has also been estimated for evaluation of figure of merit. This figure of merit clearly indicates that wind power is the most sustainable source for electricity generation, followed by small hydropower and solar photovoltaics.
This paper compares the incentives a carbon dioxide emissions price creates for investment in low carbon dioxide-emitting technologies in the electricity sector. We consider the extent to which operational differences across generation technologies – particularly, nuclear, wind and solar photovoltaic – create differences in the incentives for new investment, which is measured by the operating profits of a potential entrant. First, astylized model of an electricity system demonstrates that the composition of the existing generation system may cause electricity prices to increase by different amounts over time when a carbon dioxide price is imposed. Differences in operation across technologies therefore translate...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Carbon price, Electricity, Investment
The increased urgency of dealing with mitigation of the looming climate change has sparked renewed interest in the nuclear energy option. There exists a substantial stream of research on the amount of embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with nuclear generated electricity. While conventional fossil fuelled power plants cause emissions almost exclusively from the plant site, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle are caused in processing stages upstream and downstream from the plant. This paper distils the findings from a comprehensive literature review of energy and greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear fuel cycle and determines some of the causes for the widely varying...
Wind power forecasting is becoming an important tool in electricity markets as the amount of wind power rapidly increases. However, the use of wind power forecasting in market operations and among market participants is still at an early stage. We discuss the current use of wind power forecasting in U.S. ISO/RTO markets, and give recommendations for how to make efficient use of the information in state-of-the-art wind power forecasts.