Search Results (28)

Climate action represents the most comprehensive of the 2015 United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in that climate change impacts all other goals. Urban overpopulation is a primary cause, as energy consumption is a significant source of carbon dioxide emissions directing climate change. The population increase origin is attributable to the agricultural/urban developments that became geographically widespread approximately 6000 years ago. Simultaneously, religious belief stressed multiple children, with women obligated to produce them. This female duty created gender inequality and reduced the health and well-being of women, as pregnancy is a noted risk factor for decreased lifetime health. Regardless of the detrimental risk to their health and well-being, the gender inequality, and the adverse effects of birthing multiple children regarding climate action, women today continue to feel obliged to reproduce appropriately. This burden requires change to meet the three sustainable development goals of good health and well-being (SDG 3), gender equality (SDG 5), and climate action (SDG 13). An author-developed mindfulness-based psychoanalytic narrative research method presents a means for promoting such change based on a qualitative narrative analysis of the responses of several participants regarding its success in clarifying the values of these women in overcoming career-related burnout. Full article

The increasing frequency and severity of forest fires globally highlight the critical need to understand their environmental impacts. This study applies spatial autocorrelation techniques to analyze the dispersion patterns of carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions during the 2021 Manavgat forest fires in Türkiye, using Sentinel-5P satellite data. Univariate (UV) Global Moran’s I values indicated strong spatial autocorrelation for CO (0.84–0.93) and NO₂ (0.90–0.94), while Bivariate (BV) Global Moran’s I (0.69–0.84) demonstrated significant spatial correlations between the two gases. UV Local Moran’s I analysis identified distinct UV High-High (UV-HH) and UV Low-Low (UV-LL) clusters, with CO concentrations exceeding 0.10000 mol/m² and exhibiting wide dispersion, while NO₂ concentrations, above 0.00020 mol/m², remained localized near intense fire zones due to its shorter atmospheric lifetime. BV Local Moran’s I analysis revealed overlapping BV-HH (high CO, high NO₂) and BV-LL (low CO, low NO₂) clusters, influenced by topography and meteorological factors. These findings enhance the understanding of gas emission dynamics during forest fires and provide critical insights into the influence of environmental and combustion processes on pollutant dispersion. Full article

Low-carbon electricity and heat production is essential for keeping the decarbonization targets and climate mitigation goals. Thus, an accurate understanding of the potential environmental impacts constitutes a key aspect not only for the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions but also for other environmental categories. Life cycle assessment allows us to conduct an overall evaluation of a given process or system through its whole lifetime across various environmental indicators. This study focused on construction, operation and maintenance, and end-of-life phases, which were analyzed based on the ReCiPe 2016 method. Within this work, authors assessed the environmental performance of one of the renewable energy sources—Enhanced Geothermal Systems, which utilize supercritical carbon dioxide as a working fluid to produce electricity and heat. Heat for the process is extracted from hot, dry rocks, typically located at depths of approximately 4–5 km, and requires appropriate stimulation to enable fluid flow. Consequently, drilling and site preparation entail significant energy and material inputs. This stage, based on conducted calculations, exhibits the highest global warming potential, with values between 5.2 and 30.1 kgCO₂eq/MWh_el, corresponding to approximately 65%, 86%, and 94% in terms of overall impacts for ecosystems, human health, and resources categories, respectively. Moreover, the study authors compared the EGS impacts for the Polish and Norwegian conditions. Obtained results indicated that due to much higher electricity output from the Norwegian plant, which is sited offshore, the environmental influence remains the lowest, at a level of 11.9 kgCO₂eq/MWh_el. Polish cases range between 38.7 and 54.1 kgCO₂eq/MWh_el of global warming potential in terms of electricity production. Regarding power generation only, the impacts in the case of the Norwegian facility are two to five times lower than for the installation in the Polish conditions. Full article

Transformer load losses cause various adverse effects, such as derating, a decreased lifetime, and greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, the load losses caused by non-linear loads on distribution transformers are analyzed. For this study, the load loss expressions provided by the IEEE Standard C57.110 and ANSI/UL 1561-1562 were adapted to the usual case where the transformer currents differ in each phase. The novel load loss expressions adapted from the IEEE Standard C57.110 were applied using the software known as the “Transformer Loss Calculator” (TLC), implemented with LabVIEW. For the application of new load loss expressions, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were determined by multiplying the load losses by the emission factors of each country. The experimental results are based on the recordings made by a FLUKE 435 Series II analyzer on the second of two 1000 kVA transformers, feeding real residential distribution networks with very differently distorted loads. An analysis of these transformers shows that the annual energy losses and CO₂ emissions obtained from the adapted load loss expressions could be more than 5% of those determined by the original IEEE and ANSI Standard expressions. Due to these percentage loss and emission differences, it is advisable to use the TLC software in transformer monitoring instruments. Full article

With the intensification of climate warming, the carbon dioxide emissions from high-energy-consuming elevators have attracted increasing societal attention. The assessment of carbon dioxide emissions, particularly the boundaries and strategies of carbon dioxide emissions accounting, lacks systematic research. However, an efficient evaluation of elevator carbon dioxide emissions is beneficial for improving elevator energy utilization. A carbon dioxide emissions accounting method and inventory analysis of a life cycle for an elevator is proposed to measure the carbon dioxide emissions from production to disposal. In addition, a new assessment indicator, namely, annual carbon dioxide emissions per ton·kilometer, is proposed to evaluate the carbon dioxide emissions for different types of elevators. The lifetime carbon dioxide emissions of the elevator and its sensitivity to influencing factors were assessed. The results indicate that the carbon dioxide emissions in the four stages of manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and demolition and scraping contributed 41.31%, 0.92%, 57.32% and 0.44%, respectively. The annual carbon dioxide emissions of the elevator were about 27.18 kgCO₂/t·km. The four primary factors affecting CO₂ emissions were electricity consumption, printed circuit boards, low-alloy steel and chrome steel in descending order. Their probability distribution characteristics all obeyed triangular or uniform distributions. The median of their 95% confidence intervals was about 73,800. Their coefficients of variation were all below 2.1%. The effective strategies for energy conservation and carbon reduction were suggested by the life cycle impactor assessment. They also provide guidance for sustainable elevators. Full article

Sustainable construction should navigate the trade-offs between minimising pressure on scarce resources and the environment and maximising economic viability and human wellbeing through the whole building lifetime. In the pursuit of improving the environmental performance of the construction sector, there is growing interest in substituting conventional materials with bio-based materials. In the last decade, the use of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) as an aggregate for bio-based materials has attracted significant attention because of its ability to sequester carbon dioxide (CO₂) during plant development, its fast-growing nature, the reduced level of agricultural input requirements and its good technical properties, which could potentially result in better sustainability performance across their life cycle. This review discusses the outcomes published in the scientific literature that have dealt with the use of hemp-based construction materials in the global and Australian construction sectors, with particular emphasis on the evaluation of their sustainability aspects (i.e., environmental, economic and social) throughout their lifetime. Relevant studies were identified from a structured keyword search in the Scopus database. The results found that research on hemp-based materials has mainly focused on assessing the environmental dimension, with an emphasis on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and little consideration for economic and social aspects. The existing literature showed a strong geographical bias towards Europe; thus, the outcomes of the life cycle studies conducted may not be representative of Australia. In that line, the development of a region specific of the life cycle sustainability approach is recommended to evaluate whether hemp-based construction materials can assist in achieving GHG targets in a sustainable manner in Australia. Full article

The Future of Energy is focused on the consolidation of new energy technologies. Among them, Fuel Cells (FCs) are on the Energy Agenda due to their potential to reduce the demand for fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions, their higher efficiency (as fuel cells do not use combustion, their efficiency is not linked to their maximum operating temperature) and simplicity and absence of moving parts. Additionally, low-power FCs have been identified as the target technology to replace conventional batteries in portable applications, which can have recreational, professional, and military purposes. More recently, low-power FCs have also been identified as an alternative to conventional batteries for medical devices and have been used in the medical field both in implantable devices and as micro-power sources. The most used power supply for implantable medical devices (IMD) is lithium batteries. However, despite its higher lifetime, this is far from enough to meet the patient’s needs since these batteries are replaced through surgeries. Based on the close synergetic connection between humans and microorganisms, microbial fuel cells (MFCs) were targeted as the replacement technology for batteries in IMD since they can convert the chemical energy from molecules presented in a living organism into electrical energy. Therefore, MFCs offer the following advantages over lithium batteries: they do not need to be replaced, avoiding subjecting IMD users to different surgeries and decreasing medical costs; they do not need external recharging as they operate as long as the fuel is supplied, by the body fluids; they are a more environmentally friendly technology, decreasing the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emissions resulting from the utilization of fossil fuels and the dependency on fossil fuels and common batteries. However, they are complex systems involving electrochemical reactions, mass and charge transfer, and microorganisms, which affect their power outputs. Additionally, to achieve the desired levels of energy density needed for real applications, an MFC system must overcome some challenges, such as high costs and low power outputs and lifetime. Full article

Buildings and constructions are responsible for a great amount of global energy and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Because of these negative impacts, there is an increase in Life cycle assessment research in the construction sector to measure these effects and evaluate the sustainability performances. Life cycle assessment is a tool that can facilitate the decision-making process in the construction sector for material selection, or for the selection of the best environmentally friendly option in the building component level or building level. In this study, a comparative life cycle assessment analysis is conducted among 12 roof coverings of 1 square meter in the 60-year lifetime of a building. Impact categories that are available in environmental product declarations and included in this study are the global warming potential, ozone depletion potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical ozone creation potential, abiotic depletion potential of non-fossils and abiotic depletion potential of fossils resources. To facilitate the decision-making process, panel and monetary weightings are applied to convert environmental product declaration data of seven impact categories into one single-score. Monetary weightings applied in the study are in Euro ₂₀₁₉, differentiating itself from other comparative life cycle assessment studies. The single-score results are ranked and compared. R04 has the best performance for all panel weightings, while for monetary weightings, R03, R07 and R08 have the best performance for EPS, MMG and EVR, respectively. As a result, for 12 roof coverings, the weighted results could not address one single roof-covering material for numerous reasons. Among the weighting methods, panel weighting sets show more similarity in ranking results, while monetary-weighting sets results are more diverse. Full article

Methane (CH₄) is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitted by human activity and natural sources after carbon dioxide (CO₂). Its relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere (about 12 years) means that we can mitigate the human impacts of climate change in a relatively short period of time by reducing CH₄ emissions. The creation of CH₄ emissions management policies can be based on the distribution maps of surface CH₄ concentration that are in large-scale and at high-resolution. The estimate of CH₄ emissions with broad coverage are provided by currently extensively used satellite data supplemented with data from model simulations. However, it is at low spatial resolution. In this paper, through the combination of atmospheric CH₄ observations from the TROPOMI sensor and wind data from the ECMWF global reanalysis, a straightforward divergence method is proposed to estimate the surface CH₄ emissions in China from March 2019 to September 2022 at a resolution of 7 km × 7 km. This method was compared with the average annual CH₄ emissions of Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGARv7.0), and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) is 2.53 kg/km²/h and within error envelop (EE) is 72.93%, which represents the proportion of reliable values under certain uncertain conditions. We estimated that the average annual CH₄ emissions in China from 2019 to 2022 is 81 Tg, with the lowest emissions in 2021 (75 Tg) due to the impact of COVID-19. In 2021, the largest anthropogenic emissions in China are from agriculture, energy activities and livestock, accounting for 28% (20.8 Tg), 25% (18.9 Tg) and 19% (13.9 Tg) of total emissions, respectively, while wetlands, as the largest natural source, produce 14% (10.5 Tg) of CH₄ emissions. Full article

The increasing need for clean water can be attributed to a number of reasons, such as population growth, industrial development, and climate change. As a result of modern industrial and agricultural methods, the amount of trash generated daily is also on the rise. Waste management and increasing demand for freshwater are two of the most pressing problems facing the human race today and in the future. This study makes an attempt to strike a balance between these two concerns by repurposing a common biowaste, the banana stem, to collect solar energy for a desalination application. Banana stems work well for interfacial solar desalination because of their capillarity and the fact that they float. Camphor-soothed banana stems were placed in a solar still to collect solar thermal energy and to transfer it to the water surrounding them, speeding up the evaporation process and resulting in more freshwater. Over the course of three days, measurements were taken with the water level held constant and the stem thickness of the bananas varied between 0.5 and 1.5 cm. Enviro-economic studies and water quality analysis were used to calculate greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide mitigation, and the carbon credits obtained. Compared to a standard still, a maximum yield of 934 mL was achieved at an efficiency of 36.35 percent. The CPLs (costs per liter) for the MSS (modified solar still) and the CSS (conventional solar still) were USD 0.0503 and USD 0.0665. In comparison to its CSS counterpart, the MSS had a CPL that was 32.21 percent lower. The treated water retained a 95.77% reduction in TDS compared to salt water. The MSS is predicted to release 219.62 kg of carbon dioxide, 1.67 kg of sulfur dioxide, and 0.69 kg of nitrous oxide over its lifetime. In addition, the MSS saved USD 20.94 in carbon credits after avoiding the emission of 2.09 tonnes of CO₂. Full article

This paper mainly dealt with the technical and economic feasibility of an off-grid hybrid power generation system for a remote rural Turtuk village of Ladakh, located in the northern part of India. The study showed that the proposed configured renewable integrated hybrid system, using Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software, efficiently met the energy demand, exhibiting optimum performance with low investment. The proposed PV(115 kW)/Wind(1 kW)/Battery(164 strings of 6 V each)/DG(50 kW) hybrid system was a highly commendable, feasible solution preferred from a total of 133,156 available solutions resulting from HOMER simulations. The net present cost and energy cost of the proposed configuration were $278,176 and $0.29/kWh, respectively. The proposed hybrid configuration fulfilled local load, with 95.97% reduced dominant harmful carbon dioxide emission, as compared to the sole us of a diesel generator power supply system. The technical performance of the hybrid system was ensured, with advantages including the highest renewable penetration and least unmet load. Furthermore, the analysis exclusively evaluated the impact of the system’s economic parameters (namely, its expected inflation rate, nominal discount rate, and project lifetime) on the net present cost and cost of energy of the system using a noble single fix duo vary approach. Full article

The current EU energy and climate policy targets a significant reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the forthcoming years. Carbon pricing, embedded in the EU emissions trading system, aims at achieving emission reductions in a more evenly spread way and at the lowest overall cost for society, compared with other environmental policy tools, such as coal or electricity taxes, or incentives such as subsidies on renewables. Still, the implementation of the decarbonization policy depends on several technical parameters such as the type, size and connectivity of the energy system as well as economic restrictions that occur. Within this paper, an optimization tool will be presented, focusing on cleaner energy production and on the control and reduction of environmental impact regarding energy storage solutions. Various types of batteries are examined and evaluated towards this direction. Emphasis is given to setting new criteria for the decision-making process, considering the size of battery storage and the selection of the battery type based on the environmental impact assessment parameter. The objective function of the system is formulated so as to evaluate, monitor and finally minimize environmental emissions, focusing mainly on carbon emissions. Optimization is carried out based on mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). Two of the main battery types compared are lead–acid and lithium-ion; both of them result in results worth mentioning regarding the replacement impact (seven times during system lifetime for lead–acid) and the total environmental impact comparison (lithium-ion may reach a 60% reduction compared to lead–acid). Case studies are presented based on representative scenarios solved, which underline the importance of choosing the appropriate scope for each case and demonstrate the potential of the tool developed, as well as the possibilities for its further improvement. Full article

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is one of the major atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG). The continuous increase of CO₂ concentration and its long atmospheric lifetime may cause long-term negative effects on the climate. It is important to develop technologies to capture and minimize those emissions into the atmosphere. The objective of this work is to design and study theoretically and experimentally a numbering-up/scale-out membrane microreactor in order to be used as a capture system. The main aim of the work is to obtain an even flow distribution at each plate of the reactor. Nearly uniform flow distribution was achieved at each layer of the numbering-up microreactor according to the carried-out CFD models. The maximum difference between the average velocities was less than 6% for both gas and liquid flows. To obtain better flow distribution into the microreactor, the radius of the inlet/outlet tube was optimized. Results from CFD and experimental simulations do not match, and slightly maldistribution in achieved in the experimental system due to phase breakthrough and imperfections on the fabrication of the plates. Moreover, comparing the single channel microreactor to the scale-out microreactor, the latter showed poorer performance on CO₂ removal while expecting the reactors to have similar performance. By installing inserts with different channel widths, the experimental results were identical to the original case. Full article

Renewable energy systems are an alternative to existing systems to achieve energy savings and carbon dioxide emission reduction. Subsequently, preventing the reckless installation of renewable energy systems and formulating appropriate energy policies, including sales strategies, is critical. Thus, this study aimed to achieve energy reduction through optimal selection of the capacity and lifetime of solar thermal (ST) and ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems that can reduce the thermal energy of buildings including the most widely used photovoltaic (PV) systems. Additionally, this study explored decision-making for optimal PV, ST, and GSHP installation considering economic and environmental factors such as energy sales strategy and electricity price according to energy policies. Therefore, an optimization model based on multi-objective particle swarm optimization was proposed to maximize lifecycle cost and energy savings based on the target energy savings according to PV capacity. Furthermore, the proposed model was verified through a case study on campus buildings in Korea: PV 60 kW and ST 32 m² GSHP10 kW with a lifetime of 50 years were found to be the optimal combination and capacity. The proposed model guarantees economic optimization, is scalable, and can be used as a decision-making model to install renewable energy systems in buildings worldwide. Full article

The objective of this paper was to explore long-term costs for a single-family house in Sweden during its entire lifetime. In order to estimate the total costs, considering construction, replacement, operation, and end-of-life costs over the long term, the life cycle cost (LCC) method was applied. Different cost solutions were analysed including various economic parameters in a sensitivity analysis. Economic parameters used in the analysis include various nominal discount rates (7%, 5%, and 3%), an inflation rate of 2%, and energy escalation rates (2–6%). The study includes two lifespans (100 and 50 years). The discounting scheme was used in the calculations. Additionally, carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions were considered and systematically analysed with costs. Findings show that when the discount rate is decreased from 7% to 3%, the total costs are increased significantly, by 44% for a 100-year lifespan, while for a 50 years lifespan the total costs show a minor increase by 18%. The construction costs represent a major part of total LCC, with labor costs making up half of them. Considering costs and emissions together, a full correlation was not found, while a partial relationship was investigated. Results can be useful for decision-makers in the building sector. Full article