Search results for "Environmental economics"
showing 9 items of 389 documents
Actual provision as an alternative criterion to improve the efficiency of payments for ecosystem services for C sequestration in semiarid vineyards
2016
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the PES scheme actually used in the Sicilian rural development program, based on an egalitarian criterion, and proposing an alternative scheme in order to guarantee a greater equity and fairness of premium distribution in relation to soil carbon (C) sequestration potential. We, first, assessed the ecosystem services (ES) provided by agri-environmental measures (AEM) in terms of SOC stock increase in Sicilian vineyards. Based on these data we evaluated the efficiency of agro-environmental payments according to an egalitarian criterion and simulated the effects of the actual provision criterion adoption. Results showed that the adoption o…
DEMAND Project: A Peak Load Shaving Strategy for End-User Consumers
2018
Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are becoming increasingly widespread in modern power systems, thanks to the important benefits they can provide to the electricity grid. Indeed, BESS can be used in time shifting applications, storing energy during off-peak periods and discharging during peak times (when the cost of electricity is high). When BESS are used for peak shaving purposes, they also contribute to relieve peak demand charges, thus ensuring a saving for the consumers. This paper describes a peak load shaving strategy defined within the DEMAND project. The strategy is able to guarantee the flattest daily power diagram and the maximum benefit for the electricity consumers, reducin…
Multi-Energy School System for Seasonal Use in the Mediterranean Area
2020
School buildings represent an energy-consuming sector of real estate where different efficiency actions are necessary. The literature shows how the design of a multi-energy system offers numerous advantages, however, there are problems related to the integration of cogeneration units with renewable energy sources due to the low flexibility of the first one and the high degree of uncertainty of the latter. The authors provide an alternative solution through the analysis of a case study consisting of a multiple energy system in three Sicilian schools, focusing on the system&rsquo
A Feasibility Study for the Transition to Electric Mobility in the Island of Favignana
2021
The energy transition and climate neutrality are a short time scenario as climate concerns are rising fast. Small islands are natural microgrids in which the energy transition is subjected to economic and regulatory constraints and highly challenged by technical issues. As a first step, the Mediterranean island of Favignana has been considered in this study, to assess how electric mobility could impact the power system. According to the plans from the local decision makers, the island is moving towards a full public electric mobility in the near term, also due to the participation in the BloRin project. For this reason, a feasibility study about the technical and environmental impact of ele…
Role of Acquisition Intervals in Private and Public Cloud Storage Costs
2014
The volume of worldwide digital content has increased nine-fold within the last five years, and this immense growth is predicted to continue in the foreseeable future to reach 8 ZB by 2015. Traditionally, organizations proactively have built and managed their private storage facilities to cope with the growing demand for storage capacity. Recently, many organizations have instead welcomed the alternative of outsourcing their storage needs to the providers of public cloud storage services due to the proliferation of public cloud infrastructure offerings. The comparative cost-efficiency of these two alternatives depends on a number of factors, such as the prices of the public and private stor…
Dynamic Sustainability. Sustainability Window Analysis of Chinese Poverty-Environment Nexus Development
2015
Sustainability Window is a new analysis tool for assessing the sustainability of development simultaneously in all of its three dimensions (environmental, economic, and social). The analysis method provides information of the maximum and minimum economic development that is required to maintain the direction of social and environmental development towards more sustainable targets. With the Sustainability Window method it is possible to easily analyze the sustainability using different indicators and different time periods making comparative analyses easy. The new method makes it also possible to analyze the dynamics of the sustainability and the changes over time in the width of the window.…
Stationary, Second Use Battery Energy Storage Systems and Their Applications: A Research Review
2021
The global demand for electricity is rising due to the increased electrification of multiple sectors of economic activity and an increased focus on sustainable consumption. Simultaneously, the share of cleaner electricity generated by transient, renewable sources such as wind and solar energy is increasing. This has made additional buffer capacities for electrical grids necessary. Battery energy storage systems have been investigated as storage solutions due to their responsiveness, efficiency, and scalability. Storage systems based on the second use of discarded electric vehicle batteries have been identified as cost-efficient and sustainable alternatives to first use battery storage syste…
Water and Energy Saving in Urban Water Systems: The ALADIN Project
2016
The ALADIN project was aimed at contributing to environmental and energy sustainability of the urban water system by means of a decision support tool able to allow an evaluation of the energy impact related to each different macro-sectors of urban water cycle highlighting the main energy flows and to assess the system energy balance and identify the possible energy-efficient solutions. Moreover the tool suggests the most efficient actions in reducing water losses. In the present paper the main features of the developed tool are presented. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
L'économie matérielle de la France (1830-2015). L'histoire d'un parasite ?
2018
This article explores the long-term dynamics of material use in France over a period of 185 years. It is based on material flow accounts that are perfectly consistent with the standards of Material Flows Analysis at the national economic scale. This work - which covers domestic extraction, imports and exports - is the first long-term study of material flows for France, with annual and national data for most of the period. Our database allows us to study the evolution of French metabolism during the industrialization of the country, together with the increasing dependence on abiotic materials. We highlight a singular metabolic trajectory: that of a state that benefits from successive world-s…