Search results for " impacts"

Multicriteria-Oriented Optimization of Building Energy Performances: The Annex 72 IEA-EBC Experience

2021

International audience; This chapter describes the research experience of the International Energy Agency-Energy in Buildings and Communities Programme Annex 72 members on the application of multi-objective optimization processes for the selection of design or retrofit actions that allow for improving different aspects (energy, environmental, economic, etc.) of buildings in a life cycle perspective. Thirteen case studies were examined focussing on methodologies, applications and results and deriving generic conclusions and guidelines for building designers and decision-makers.

From local measures to regional impacts: Modelling changes in nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea

2021

Study Region: Our study region is the Baltic Sea Drainage Basin (BSDB), which covers an area of 1.8 Mio km2 distributed over 14 countries in northern Europe. Study Focus: We use a large-scale hydrological and nutrient transport model (E-HYPE) to model basin-wide impacts of measure scenarios on the Baltic Sea, where eutrophication is a critical issue for the marine ecosystem. We constructed measure scenarios based on stakeholder acceptance, established in workshops in different regions around the Baltic. These measures include local stream reach to catchment scale measures aiming to reduce nutrient transport into the stream network (buffer strips, stormwater ponds) and measures aiming to red…

Towards an integrated design of renewable electricity generation and storage systems for NZEB use: A parametric analysis

2021

Abstract Although nearly zero energy buildings have attracted growing research attention, literature analysis shows that only a limited number of researches try to couple load match/grid interaction issues and environmental impacts in early design stages. The study proposes a novel multidisciplinary design approach that allows to integrate these two conflicting aspects aiming to find trade-offs. The proposed approach has been applied to a building case study, equipped with a photovoltaics system without energy storage. The results show that even though on yearly basis the energy use (5,290 kWhe) is largely overcome by the on-site energy generation (8069 kWhe), an oversized PV system alone m…

Evaluating the effects of man-induced topographic changes in landscape structure on soil erosion by water: a case study in Sicily

2012

Infrastructure, Tariff and Legal Action: How to Achieve a Climate-Friendly Transport System

2011

Transportation absorbs about 70% of oil consumption in EU countries. The fuels that burn in the field of transport are composed of 96% of oil. Energy efficiency of road and air traffic must also be improved. But transport environmental impacts reductions should be made necessarily through a transfer of traffic from the car, lorries and aircraft to train, ship, and non motorized two-wheelers into the EU cities. In fact the former are large producers of greenhouse gases, while the latter are more environmentally friendly means of transport in climate. Reaching an annual increase of 1% of the modal split in favour of more sustainable means of transport on the environment must be set as a goal …

From biomass waste to tri-generation: a life-cycle experience in the “agro-combined” of Thibar

2018

The paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment of the energy tri-generation from biomass waste in a plant located in Tunisia. The analysis included the plant construction and end-of-life, the supply of biomass, its use for biogas production and the electricity, heating and cooling generation from biogas. The study is one of the first applications of environmental analysis to tri-generation from biomass waste in developing countries. The results showed that the plant construction is responsible of 76% of primary energy consumption and gives a contribution higher than 88% on resource depletion and ionising radiation. The operation causes 66% of the impact on human toxicity - cancer effects and mo…

Environmental Assessment of a Hybrid Energy System Supporting a Smart Polygeneration Micro-grid

2022

To support the global transition towards a climate-neutral economy by 2050, countries all over the world are implementing low carbon and energy effi ciency policies. This is leading to a rapid increase in the installations of distributed generation technologies. A hybrid system consisting of two or more energy sources could provide a more reliable supply of energy and mitigate storage require ments. In this context, this paper develops an environmental early analysis by the employment of a simplified Life Cycle Assessment approach. The above mentioned approach is used to investigate the environmental performances of the hybrid energy system of the smart polygeneration micro-grid of the Univ…

Life Cycle Assessment of solar heating and cooling systems: the tool “ELISA”

2018

Solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems play an important role in the achievement of energy and climate European goals. The benefits of these technologies should be evaluated taking into account their lifecycle energy and environmental impacts, calculated by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The development of a complete LCA can be difficult and time-consuming particularly for no-LCA experts, discouraging them in the inclusion of the lifecycle perspective in their assessments. To overcome this limit, the paper presents “ELISA - Environmental Lifecycle Impacts of Solar Air-conditioning systems”, a user-friendly simplified tool for estimating the lifecycle energy and envir…

Energy and environmental impacts of home automation components

2014

Life Cycle Assessment is applied to estimate the life cycle energy and environmental impacts of five components used in the home automation systems: an electricity meter, an actuator with an integrated current sensor, a web server audio/video, an interface with infrared emitter, a multimedia touch screen. For each component, the impacts related to “one unit of product” (selected as functional unit) are assessed following a “from cradle to grave” approach, including the manufacturing, operation and end-of-life steps. The results showed that the operation step gives a contribution higher than 54% on primary energy consumption and variable from about 54% to about 99% on environmental impacts, …

Dataset of the COVID-19 lockdown survey conducted by GIPEyOP in Spain

2022

This article introduces a dataset that captures relevant in- formation about the living conditions, feelings, and habits of residents in Spain during ninety nine days of home confinement. This and other measures, imposed by the Government of Spain to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on the population, have brought with them important economic, labor, and social changes, which have been accompanied by various modifications (some only temporary) in Spaniards habits and behaviours. Data collection was carried out through the implementation of a questionnaire with 33 questions, which was sent by email to the collaborators of GIPEyOP (Elections and Public Opinion Research Group from the Unive…