Global warming is widely recognized to affect the built environment in several ways. This paper projects the current and future climate scenarios on a nearly zero-energy dwelling in Brussels. ...Initially, a time-integrated discomfort assessment is carried out for the base case without any active cooling system. It is found that overheating risk will increase up to 528%, whereas the overcooling risk will decrease up to 32% by the end of the century. It is also resulted that the overheating risk will overlap the overcooling risk by 2090s under high emission scenarios. Subsequently, two commonly applied HVAC strategies are considered, including a gas-fired boiler + an air conditioner (S01) and a reversible air-to-water heat pump (S02). In general, S02 shows ∼6–13% and 15–27% less HVAC primary energy use and GHG emissions compared to S01, respectively. By conducting the sensitivity analysis, it is found that the choice of the HVAC strategy, heating set-point, and cooling set-point are among the most influential parameters determining the HVAC primary energy use. Finally, some future recommendations are provided for practice and future research.
•Climate change will shift Brussels from a heating-dominated to cooling-dominated city by 2090s.•Climate change will significantly increase overheating risk in naturally ventilated buildings.•Air-to-water heat pump shows 6–13% less HVAC primary energy use than gas-fired boiler + AC.•Air-to-water heat pump shows 15–27% less HVAC GHG emissions than gas-fired boiler + AC.•Selection of HVAC system and set-point temperatures are dominant in determining primary energy use.
Carbon emission of global construction sector Huang, Lizhen; Krigsvoll, Guri; Johansen, Fred ...
Renewable & sustainable energy reviews,
January 2018, 2018-01-00, Letnik:
81
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The construction sector delivers the infrastructure and buildings to the society by consumption large amount of unrenewable energy. Consequently, this consumption causes the large emission of CO2. ...This paper explores and compares the level of CO2 emission caused by the construction activities globally by using the world environmental input-output table 2009. It analyses CO2 emission of construction sector in 40 countries, considering 26 kinds of energy use and non-energy use. Results indicate: 1) the total CO2 emission of the global construction sector was 5.7 billion tons in 2009, contributing 23% of the total CO2 emissions produced by the global economics activities. 94% of the total CO2 from the global construction sector are indirect emission. 2) Gasoline, diesel, other petroleum products and light fuel oil are four main energy sources for direct CO2 emission of global construction sector. The indirect CO2 emission mainly stems from hard coal, nature gas, and non-energy use. 3) The emerging economies cause nearly 60% of the global construction sector total CO2 emission. China is the largest contributor. Moreover, the intensities of construction sector’s direct and indirect CO2 emission in the developing countries are larger than the value in the developed countries. Therefore, promoting the development and use of the low embodied carbon building material and services, the energy efficiency of construction machines, as well as the renewable energy use are identified as three main pivotal opportunities to reduce the carbon emissions of the construction sector.
Several research studies have ranked indoor pollution among the top environmental risks to public health in recent years. Good indoor air quality is an essential component of a healthy indoor ...environment and significantly affects human health and well-being. Poor air quality in such environments may cause respiratory disease for millions of pupils around the globe and, in the current pandemic-dominated era, require ever more urgent actions to tackle the burden of its impacts.
The poor indoor quality in such environments could result from poor management, operation, maintenance, and cleaning. Pupils are a different segment of the population from adults in many ways, and they are more exposed to the poor indoor environment: They breathe in more air per unit weight and are more sensitive to heat/cold and moisture. Thus, their vulnerability is higher than adults, and poor conditions may affect proper development.
However, a healthy learning environment can reduce the absence rate, improves test scores, and enhances pupil/teacher learning/teaching productivity. In this article, we analyzed recent literature on indoor air quality and health in schools, with the primary focus on ventilation, thermal comfort, productivity, and exposure risk. This study conducts a comprehensive review to summarizes the existing knowledge to highlight the latest research and solutions and proposes a roadmap for the future school environment. In conclusion, we summarize the critical limitations of the existing studies, reveal insights for future research directions, and propose a roadmap for further improvements in school air quality. More parameters and specific data should be obtained from in-site measurements to get a more in-depth understanding at contaminant characteristics. Meanwhile, site-specific strategies for different school locations, such as proximity to transportation routes and industrial areas, should be developed to suit the characteristics of schools in different regions. The socio-economic consequences of health and performance effects on children in classrooms should be considered. There is a great need for more comprehensive studies with larger sample sizes to study on environmental health exposure, student performance, and indoor satisfaction. More complex mitigation measures should be evaluated by considering energy efficiency, IAQ and health effects.
•Most schools worldwide have basic natural ventilation systems; typically, inadequate for meeting the needs of pupils.•Exposure to various air pollutants in school buildings risks severe damage to pupils' health.•Pupils tend to feel comfortable in indoor climates that are cooler than environments where adults feel thermally neutral.•Studies show that reduced classroom air quality will cause a reduction in cognitive performance of pupils.•There is limited insight demonstrating detailed energy use profiles in school buildings.
In recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use (including materials and energy) and carbon emissions, ...leading to converging pressures of declining resource security, rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices, and climate change. We ask whether well-designed policies can reduce global material and energy use, and carbon emissions, with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards. We use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally. We apply a production (territorial) and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks: a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies; a ‘high efficiency’ outlook involving a global carbon price rising from $50 to $236 (constant price) per tonne of CO2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency (rising from 1.5% historically to between 3.5% and 4.5% in the scenarios); and a ‘medium efficiency’ outlook midway between the ‘no change’ and ‘high’ outlooks. We find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (toe) in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe. Carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price, less than half the level of the reference case (29–37 billion tonnes of CO2 instead of 74 billion tonnes) and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency (95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials). We find that OECD economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth, and that developing economies such as China could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost. Globally, the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible. Our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well-designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living. The research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives. The findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path.
•Economic and environmental objectives can be achieved simultaneously.•Well-designed policies deliver reductions in resource use and emissions.•Integrated modelling with detail for economic interactions.•Decarbonisation and dematerialization achievable without decline in global economic growth.•Consumption and territorial (production) view of resource use and emissions.
Globally increasing energy demands and environmental concerns related to the use of fossil fuels have stimulated extensive research to identify new energy systems and economies that are sustainable, ...clean, low cost, and environmentally benign. Hydrogen generation from solar-driven water splitting is a promising strategy to store solar energy in chemical bonds. The subsequent combustion of hydrogen in fuel cells produces electric energy, and the only exhaust is water. These two reactions compose an ideal process to provide clean and sustainable energy. In such a process, a hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), an oxygen evolution reaction (OER) during water splitting, and an oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) as a fuel cell cathodic reaction are key steps that affect the efficiency of the overall energy conversion. Catalysts play key roles in this process by improving the kinetics of these reactions. Porphyrin-based and corrole-based systems are versatile and can efficiently catalyze the ORR, OER, and HER. Because of the significance of energy-related small molecule activation, this review covers recent progress in hydrogen evolution, oxygen evolution, and oxygen reduction reactions catalyzed by porphyrins and corroles.
•A comprehensive simulation model has been developed to predict the overall energy performance of PV-DSF.•Sensitivity analyses of air gap depths were conducted and the optimal air gap depth was ...identified.•The overall energy performance and energy saving potential of the PV-DSF was evaluated.•A comparative study was conducted between the PV-DSF and other commonly used window technologies.
This paper presents the annual overall energy performance and energy-saving potential of a ventilated photovoltaic double-skin facade (PV-DSF) in a cool-summer Mediterranean climate zone. A numerical simulation model based on EnergyPlus was utilized to simulate the PV-DSF overall energy performance, simultaneously taking into account thermal power and daylight. Based on numerical model, sensitivity analyses about air gap width and ventilation modes have been lead in Berkeley (California) with the aim to optimize unit’s structure design and operational strategy of PV-DSF. Via simulation, the overall energy performance including thermal, power and daylighting of the optimized PV-DSF was evaluated using the typical meteorological year (TMY) weather data. It was found that per unit area of the proposed PV-DSF was able to generate about 65kWh electricity yearly. If high efficiency cadmium telluride (CdTe) semi-transparent PV modules are adopted, the annual energy output could be even doubled. The PV-DSF studied, also featured good thermal and daylighting performances. The PV-DSF can effectively block solar radiation while still providing considerable daylighting illuminance. Due simply to excellent overall energy performance, a PV-DSF at Berkeley can reduce net electricity use by about 50% compared with other commonly used glazing systems. Efficiency improvements of semi-transparent PV modules would further increase the energy saving potential of a PV-DSF and thus making this technology more promising.
This study aimed to evaluate the dynamic effects of globalization, renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, and economic growth on carbon-dioxide emission levels in Argentina ...over the 1970–2018 period. The econometric methodology considered in this study involved applications of methods that are robust to handling structural break problems in the data. Among the major findings, the Maki cointegration, with multiple structural breaks, analysis revealed long-run associations between carbon-dioxide emissions, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, globalization, and economic growth. The elasticity estimates from the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model analysis showed evidence of renewable energy consumption and globalization reducing the emissions while non-renewable energy consumption was found to boost the emissions, both in the short- and long-run. Besides, globalization and renewable energy consumption were found to jointly reduce the emissions while globalization and non-renewable energy consumption were found to jointly boost the emissions in the long-run only. Moreover, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis was also verified in this study. Based on these key findings, several critically important policies are recommended.
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