Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: The Impact of the EU Car CO2 Regulation on the Energy System and the Role of Electro-Mobility to Achieve Transport Decarbonisation

Significance Statement

Several fuel-efficient technologies that can deliver significant reductions in fuel consumption were developed in recent years for standard gasoline vehicles. Other technologies such as full-hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric have garnered significant attention lately as ways to reduce petroleum consumption, lower consumer fuel costs, standard gasoline vehicles and reduce  CO₂ emission targets.

The European Union adopted a CO₂ legislation, setting specific CO₂ emission targets of the average new fleet at 130 g/km and 95 g/km by the end of 2020 and onwards. The EU proposed to reduce the total GHG emissions in the EU by 40% in 2030 over the 1990 levels.

Christian Thiel and colleagues from Directorate for Energy, Transport and Climate, Joint Research Centre – European Commission looked at how the European Union CO₂ car legislation, can contribute towards an overall EU 40% greenhouse gases reduction target and how it may foster the deployment of electro-mobility in Europe. The study is now published in peer-reviewed journal, Energy Policy.

The EU policy will have an impact on the technological mix in the transport sector, and also affects the overall energy sector due to the substitution of fuels. The authors used a TIMES based energy system model to analyze the newly introduced policy, they also based their study on a car sector at a much higher technology detail in the context of the car CO₂ legislation than employed in previous studies.

The study reported that in all scenarios, electric vehicles become the major powertrain option by 2050 while other cars required higher costs and led to higher emissions. According to the scenarios, electric vehicles will become a cost-efficient technology for decarbonizing the energy system beyond 2035 and a deployment of electric vehicles will sharply increase between 2020-2030 at learning rates > 12.5%, and reaching shares >30% by 2030.

The analysis also showed that regulating CO₂ emission from cars is an effective CO₂ mitigation policy regarding the total emission abatement that can be achieved not only in cars but also through increased renewable power. C. Thiel: “Electro-mobility can accelerate the deployment of low-carbon power technologies in Europe”.

The authors point out that stricter CO₂ emissions limits beyond 2020 can have a positive impact on energy security aspects as it can reduce the consumption of fossil oil based fuels in the EU. Future plans are to increase the accuracy of energy/transport models used in the energy analysis and to address customer behavior and their willingness to invest in low carbon technologies.

About The Author

Christian Thiel leads the project “Modelling for Smart, Clean, and Efficient Mobility” in the Sustainable Transport Unit of the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s science and knowledge service. Christian’s research interests are transport decarbonisation, technology innovation, interaction between electro-mobility and the power/energy system. He has published numerous papers and reports in this field. The scientific and technical advice work of Christian and his colleagues supports European policies in the energy and transport field.

Christian joined the European Commission in 2009. Before, he worked 12 years in the automotive industry, amongst others, as European Engineering Project Manager for the Chevrolet Volt/ Opel Ampera.

He holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Science (Geooekologie) from the Technical University Braunschweig, a bachelor’s degree in Biology from Université Paris VI and an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University Frankfurt (Main).

Journal Reference

Christian Thiel¹, Wouter Nijs¹, Sofia Simoes¹, Johannes Schmidt²,  Arnold van Zyl³, Erwin Schmid², The Impact of the EU Car CO2 Regulation on the Energy System and the Role of Electro-Mobility to Achieve Transport Decarbonisation, Energy Policy 96 (2016) 153–166.

Show Affiliation

¹ Institute for Energy and Transport, Joint Research Centre – European Commission, Italy and The Netherlands.

² University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria.

³ Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW), Stuttgart, Germany.

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Pumped hydro energy storage in buildings

Significance Statement

In Arras, France, amongst the innumerous historical buildings there is a contemporary one, the Goudemand residence, making history by itself. The building, managed by Pas-de-Calais habitat, the region’s social operator, has been recently renovated with the implementation of solar panels and wind turbines on the roof in an effort to render it grid-independent. But what makes such building really unique is the presence of an open water storage tank in the roof connected to another one in the basement.

The system is used as a giant battery: to store energy, water is pumped from the lower to the higher reservoir. To later retrieve that energy, water is transferred from the higher reservoir to the lower reservoir through a turbine. The concept is not new. Pumped hydro is the most widely deployed energy storage technology worldwide. In Belgium, one example is the Coo-Trois-Ponts power station that provides an important balancing of the national power grid and has the main task of reactivating the power grid in case of blackout. Despite typically consisting of very large installations, the maturity and simplicity of pumped hydro has frequently prompted the question as to whether such technology could be used on a smaller scale, namely in buildings.

Recently, at least part of that question has been demystified in the article Pumped hydro energy storage in buildings published in the Applied Energy journal by researchers Guilherme Silva and Patrick Hendrick from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The researchers started by looking at existing installations and the results seemed grim. Information regarding small installations was scarce and the smallest installation they could find in the literature was for an island in Greece, but still too large to be applied to a building. Hearing about the Goudemand residence, so close to home, was a great boost to morale.

The researchers analysed the installation and built a model that allowed them to extrapolate results for other buildings. They realised that the economies of scale that render large pumped hydro installations economically viable were not present in small installations. Also, a large volume of water is needed, making such installations bulky and heavy, a difficult fit for urban settings. Integrating such installation with the building’s water system is also cumbersome: the water quality would be difficult to control and both systems require a contrasting dimensioning. At the same time, other options for energy storage, such as lithium-ion batteries, enjoy very strong price reductions that are not expected to hit pumped hydro which uses mature technologies such as water pumps.

There is, however, a bright side to it: installations large enough and, for instance, close to canals would have significantly lower costs. Also, the full impact of such installation (on CO2 emissions for example) is yet to be calculated and compared to other technologies. Energy storage still has a long way ahead and only time will tell which technologies make to the end. Until then, installations such as the Goudemand residence help to pump up knowledge on the subject.

Source: Transition énergétique: Pas-de-Calais habitat innove et expérimente l’autonomie énergétique des parties communes dans l’une de ses résidences. Pas-de-Calais habitat press release (2012).

About The Author

Patrick Hendrick is the Head of Aero-Thermo-Mechanics Department at ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles) in Belgium.

He is active in research fields related to renewable energy and more particularly to energy storage, with projects on battery energy storage, pumped hydro energy storage, CAES or “green” hydrogen for seasonal storage with PEMFCs.

About The Author

Guilherme de Oliveira e Silva is a researcher at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium where he has been studying the electric power industry, namely the impact of market liberalisation and the increased share of renewable energy sources and storage. ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Google Scholar.

Journal Reference

Guilherme de Oliveira e Silva, Patrick Hendrick. Pumped hydro energy storage in buildings. Applied energy 179 (2016) 1242–1250.

Aero-Thermo-Mechanics Dept. (ATM), École Polytechnique, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Lactic acid production from recycled paper sludge: Process intensification by running fed-batch into a membrane-recycle bioreactor

Significance Statement

Lactic acid has many industrial applications. It acts as a precursor of polylactic acid that is promptly broadening in the market as a suitable substitute of petrochemical-based plastics. Polylactic acid is a biodegradable and biocompatible polymer. During combination of homopolymers poly-l-lactic acid and poly-d-lactic acid, high optical purity is used by which regular structures are formed in the crystalline phase. The ratio of poly-l-lactic acid and poly-d-lactic revamps the properties and disintegratability of polylatctic acid.

However D-lactic acid is non-edible and can be toxic. Hence there arose challenges in producing optically pure lactic acid using economical renewable resources. Large amounts of waste is produced by European paper industry of which seventy percent of recycled paper production. So it is indispensable to identify economical and environmentally sustainable application to avoid harmful deposition in landfills. Portuguese researchers proposed an approach to improve the production of lactic acid using recycled paper sludge as an attractive alternative raw material.

The selective production of L(+)-lactic acid from recycled paper sludge by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation had already been implemented under a pulsed fed-batch mode using lactobacillus rhamnosus. Many studies have made clear that lactic acid promotes an important inhibitor effect both on cell growth and on lactic acid production. On preferring a fed-batch strategy, a high lactic acid concentration is achieved significantly limiting the conversion.

Various approaches had been suggested to avoid product inhibition on lactic acid fermentation, but product removal is the most effective approach. Susana Oliveira Marques and her colleagues proposed membrane separation processes, which have many advantages in terms of energy efficiency, separation capacity, etc. and also possesses increased capacity, yield by operating at high cell densities and avoiding product inhibition.

The authors’ objective is to intensify simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) implementation into a membrane-recycle bioreactor in which the substrate was fed to the fermentor and the reaction mixture is continuously recycled through an external filtration unit. Thereby, maintaining a stream with constant product concentration while extending operation the product is removed as soon as it was formed.

To get consistent product concentrations, high dry matter contents should be used for running simultaneous saccharification and fermentation processes. However, on handling high solids loadings, the operational feasibility of membrane bioreactors is doubtful as they disintegrated membranes functionality due to increased cake layer formation and membrane fouling. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation processes not only grow microbial cells, but also deals with residual lignocellulosic solid material providing a very high content of suspended solids.

According to the authors, it was very important to adequately select the module configuration and process conditions, so as to decrease the concentration polarization phenomena. Instead of using high flow velocities and lower transmembrane pressures, dynamic membrane filtration configuration should be adopted to promote higher membrane shear rate.

Henceforth the team of author’s study proposed flat sheet filtration module will be allowed by promoting the feed stream pass along the surface at a high cross flow velocity, and thus operating as a dynamic cross-flow filtration system. Porous asymmetric polymeric membranes with an ultrafiltration process would be implemented. Polysulphone and polyether sulphone membranes, exhibiting very good chemical and thermal stability could  be utilized for micro and ultrafiltration.

Thereby authors suggested the best approach to run the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process for the lactic acid production from recycled paper sludge into the in house membrane recycle bioreactor (MRB) based on the product inhibition along with the limitations imposed by the high solids concentrations. It would improve other simultaneous saccharification and fermentation processes dealing with high-solids concentrations, also using cost-effective lignocellulosic feedstock biorefineries. For instance, the fermentation that produces butanol, an advanced biofuel platform, is also strongly affected by end-product inhibition, and thus this bioprocess might also be enhanced by applying the authors’ proposed strategy. In terms of alternative feedstocks for bio-production of lactic acid, the combination of recycled paper sludge with a lignocellulosic material exhibiting lower ash content, such as brewer’s spent grains, might be important by reducing the gathering of unreacted inert to elimination.

The attractiveness of the innovative system proposed by these authors thus lies in the application of membrane assisted technology, under a MRB configuration, to a SSF process dealing with high suspended solids loadings, which might improve several biorefinery processes.

Journal Reference

S. Marques¹, C.T. Matos^1,4, F.M. Gírio¹, J.C. Roseiro¹, J.A.L. Santos^2,3, Lactic acid production from recycled paper sludge: Process intensification by running fed-batch into a membrane-recycle bioreactor, Biochemical Engineering Journal, Volume 120, April 2017, Pages 63–72

Show Affiliations

1. Laboratório Nacional de Energia e Geologia, I.P. (LNEG), Unidade de Bioenergia, Estrada do Paço do Lumiar 22, 1649-038 Lisboa, Portugal.
2. Departamento de Bioengenharia, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal.
3. IBB, Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal.
4. Current address: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), Sustainability Assessment Unit, Via Fermi, 21021, Ispra, VA, Italy

 

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Renewable Energy Global Innovations features: Assessment on the Research Trend of Low-Carbon Energy Technology Investment: A Bibliometric Analysis

Significance Statement

As a result of high carbon emission which leads to global warming, there exists a persistent desire to create an alternative route for energy supply from renewable sources. The fusion of low-carbon energy technologies, which is a form of renewable energy to the developing world would not only reduce emission of carbon particles but also satisfy energy demand.

Despite the use of bibliometric analytical method of study and evaluation of previous research with focus on low-carbon technology investment, there exists a need for more detailed bibliometric strategy to provide an encompassing knowledge in this field.

Dr. Zhifu Mi and colleagues conducted a comprehensive bibliometric analysis from obtainable literatures in order to find the research status and trend in line with that of the low-carbon energy technology investment, coupled with measurements of comprehension strength between countries, followed by a frequency analysis of keywords to discover research hot topics as a base for future assessment and lastly, provision of relevant ideas needed for the future development and investment of low-carbon energy technology. The paper is now published in the journal, Applied Energy.

The authors made use of databases of Science Citation Index Expanded from 1981 to date and that of Social Sciences Citation Index dating back to 2002. They also considered some characteristic terms such as general statistics, number of countries’ publications, journal and subject distributions, authors and institution statistics, academic collaboration, article citation and comprehensive strength in the field of low-carbon energy technology investment among countries from 2121 publications.

Following the trends of top 10 productive countries, two stages were observed from the year 1985 to 2013; the first stage with stable development from 1985 to 2014 with research growth rate of 13.15%, and the second, with rapid development from 2005 to 2013 with research growth rate of 29.06%. This shows that the low-carbon energy technology investment has reached the rapid development stage.

The USA had the highest number of publications, followed by European countries of Germany and UK, and the fourth was China. Highest number of publications was observed in developed countries compared to the developing ones, but a decrease in disparity as years go by was also envisaged.

Energy Policy had the highest number of total publications, followed by Renewable Energy and Energy. However, the highest citations per publications were found in the journals of Biomass Bioenergy followed by International Journal of Hydrogen Energy and Solar Energy. They also found Energy Fuel journal followed by the journals of Environmental Sciences Ecology and Engineering to have the highest number of subjects related to the low-carbon energy technology investment.

The national comprehensive strength of the USA, in the field of the low-carbon technology was the highest followed by the UK. European countries dominated the top 15 productive countries with inclusion of developing countries of China and Turkey.

When the authors analysed the frequency of keywords, “renewable energy” was discovered to be the mostly used. “Carbon capture and storage” was observed to be an emerging keyword with an upward trend, followed by the frequently used “electricity”. Research hotspots with keywords such as “policy”, “real option theory” and “uncertainty” are also developing rapidly.

This study was able to provide a broad bibliometric method which analyzed the investment in low-carbon energy technology for future assessments.

About The Author

Dr. Zhifu Mi is a Senior Research Associate in the School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UEA) and Senior Research Fellow in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He is a Managing Guest Editor of Journal of Cleaner Production (IF=4.959). His research is focused on climate change mitigation, energy policy, and climate change economic theories and modelling. He has authored over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

He was invited to write a review article entitled Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) for Climate Change in Oxford Bibliographies which invites top scholars and researchers in the field to contribute. He has served as an Author for Chapter 37 on International Policies and Actions to Tackle Climate Change in the Third National Assessment Report on Climate Change which is known as Chinese “IPCC Assessment Report”.

Journal Reference

H. Yu^1,2,3,4, Y.M. Wei^1,2,3, B.J. Tang^1,2,3, Z. Mi^1,5, S.Y. Pan^1,2,3, Assessment on the Research Trend of Low-Carbon Energy Technology Investment: A Bibliometric Analysis, Applied Energy 184 (2016) 960–970.

Show Affiliations

1. Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
2. School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
3. Collaborative Innovation Center of Electric Vehicles in Beijing, Beijing 100081, China
4. Visitor of Energy Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK
5. School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

 

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