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Conventional economic growth theory assumes that technological progress is exogenous, that resources are “produced” by capital and labor and that resource consumption is a consequence, not a cause, of growth. The reality is different and more complex. A `growth engine' is a positive feedback involving declining costs of inputs and increasing demand for lower priced outputs, which then triggers new investment. This drives costs down further, thanks to economies of scale and learning-by-doing as well as new technology. In a competitive environment declining prices follow declining costs. The most important ‘growth engine' of the first industrial revolution was partly dependent on coal and steam power, and partly on cheaper iron and steel. The feedback operated through rapidly declining fossil fuel and mechanical power costs. The growth impetus due to fossil fuel discoveries – oil followed coal – and new applications – especially electrification – continued through the 19th century and into the 20th, resulting in a huge economic growth impetus based on internal combustion engines, automobiles, aircraft, electrical goods and an enormous industrial complex. Peak oil and the need to cut GHG will change this dynamic, via rising prices. Implications for economic growth – past and future – will be discussed.
Biographical Sketch
Robert U. Ayres is a physicist and economist noted for his work on the role of thermodynamics in the economic process, and more recently for his investigation of the role of energy in economic growth. He is emeritus professor of economics and technology at the international business school INSEAD, in France, where he has continued his life-long, pioneering studies of materials/energy flows in the global economy. He originated the concept of “industrial metabolism”, which has since eolved into a field of study known today as “industrial ecology” with its own journal/.
Ayres was trained as a physicist at the University of Chicago, University of Maryland, and Kings College London (Ph. D in Mathematical Physics). He was Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh from 1979 until 1992, when he was appointed Professor of Environment and Management at INSEAD. He is currently an Institute Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.
Robert Ayres is author or co-author of 18 books and more than 200 journal articles and book chapters. His books include Aspects of Environmental Economics: A Materials Balance – General Equilibrium Approach, with Ralph C. d'Arge & Allen V. Kneese, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1970 (Japanese Edition, 1974); Turning Point: The End of the Growth Paradigm (Earthscan, 1998); Economic Growth and Change in a Material World: A reappraisal of Microeconomics, with Katalin Martinás, Edward Elgar Ltd. Cheltenham, UK and Northhampton MA, 2006; and The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity, with Benjamin Warr (Edward Elgar, 2009).
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Even if Information and communication technologies constitute one of the sources of climate degradation, this sector can now provide a plethora of solutions to mitigate and adapt to this adverse impact Indeed, ICTs have a major role in improving environmental performance and addressing climate change across all sectors of the economy. ICTs can help reduce energy consumption and manage scarce resources. High-impact areas include urban infrastructures, buildings and the energy sector. ICT applications also enable monitoring and responding to pollution, biodiversity loss, land use patterns, desertification, etc... Today, many governments have established policies and programmes on ICT covering increasing Green ICTs applications and promoting environment related. The purpose of our paper is to expose the potential role that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play at different stages of the process of climate change, from contributing to global warming to mitigating its impact on environment and developing solutions either in other sectors like energy, transport and buildings.
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Accelerated and unpredictable technological development, uncontrolled exhaustion of natural resources and the lack of ecological awareness lead to the violation of the nature’s balance. Along with the escalation of ecological problems the mankind encounters, the need and interest for education in the field of environmental protection emerges. Therefore, the need for raising awareness of environmental protection as an ambient that ensures the present and future existence of the human kind has been recognized. One of the main priorities and interests of every country is to protect the environment, and exactly this priority requires a thorough change in man’s relation towards the environment, in that way securing further advancement of mankind.
In this paper, the authors recognize the need for ecological education as an opportunity for improving ecological security, in particular at the example of the Republic of Serbia.
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In this paper, we describe a solar oven (solar cooker) project that we introduced to the Arab school, ALhuzayyiell, located in the city of Rahat in the Negev. Although the use of solar energy for cooking is well established, it is not generally popular—a situation supported by the results of a questionnaire that we distributed to the students at Beit Berl College. With this project, we demonstrate that it is possible to bring complex ideas—albeit very important ones to humanity—to school-age children, starting from kindergarten.
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The LANDSAT- TM Band-6 raw data is converted to black body temperature in degree Celsius by using IDRISI software model. Recent two decade data is used for detection of surface temperature change during 1990- 2010 to estimate increase rate of increase in temperature to understand the intensity of Global warming in the present and previous decades. It is evident that surface temperature of Tapi Basin in the Central part of India increased from 41.6 oC in May 1990 to 44.1 oC in May 2010.This fact proves the intensity of Global warming. The spatio-temporal change is also detected to classify the basin in micro-thermal zones. Recently, Tapi basin facing several problems attributed to this temperature change in river channel as well as in basin area. The prominent channel change is aggradations. Aggradations lead to the decreases of channel capacity causing high floods even in low to moderate rainfall. The basin is facing problem of depletion of water level in channel as well as water table and salinization of basin soil due to accelerated rate of evaporation with increase of the temperature. The Tapi basin is situated in core part of India. It extents between 20° 4' 33.2574" N to 22° 1' 3.2556" N lat and 72° 38' 11.8752" E to 78° 16' 41.865" E log and covers 65145 sq.km area with 724 km. east-west length of basin .The basin is underlined Deccan trap formations and comes under the tropical monsoon regime
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Nitrogen oxides as well as ozone play a central role in atmospheric chemistry and the improvement of techniques and instruments allowing for a better understanding of the distributions and behaviour of the mentioned compounds are strongly required by the scientific community. Thanks to the new satellite technology, global scenes of the dynamical and chemical processes of the atmospheric compounds can be drawn. Ground-based equipments have to be used for comparison/validation of the satellite retrievals. The LIS (Lampedusa Island Spectrometer) instrument is a SPATRAM (SPectrometer for Atmospheric TRacers and Aerosol Measurement) type equipment allowing for the measurements of spectral sky radiance along the zenith direction, in its standard configuration. Here, the first results obtained with the LIS spectrometer installed in the centre of Palermo (Italy) for nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) total columns, and the comparisons with data from the OMI – Ozone Monitoring Instrument on board of AURA satellite for O3 total column are presented and discussed.
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The main environmental issues affecting the broad acceptability of NPP (Nuclear Power Plant) are the emission of radioactive materials, the generation of radioactive and heat waste, and the potential for nuclear accidents. Satellite remote sensing is an important tool for spatio-temporal analysis and surveillance of environment, thermal heat waste of waters being a major concern in many coastal ecosystems involving nuclear power plants, as sharp changes in water temperature can significantly affect the distribution and physiology of aquatic biota and contribute to global warming. The thermal plume signature in the NPP hydrological system in TIR (Thermal Infrared) spectral bands of Landsat TM and ETM TIR band 6 as well as ASTER TIR bands time series satellite have been used for WST (Water Surface Temperature) detection, mapping and monitoring. As a test case the methodology was applied for NPP Cernavoda, Romania during period of 1990-2010 years. Thermal discharge from two nuclear reactors cooling is dissipated as waste heat in Danube-Black -Sea Channel and Danube River. If during the winter thermal plume is localized to an area of a few km of NPP, the temperature difference between the plume and non-plume areas being about 1.5 oC, during summer and fall, is a larger thermal plume up to 5-6 km far along Danube Black Sea Channel, the temperature change being of about 1.0 oC.
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If we examine the world’s total energy use fossil fuels dominate completely. When we examine oil, natural gas and coal individually and in detail we see that each fuel type has fractions of superior and inferior quality. The superior fractions of these three fuels are, respectively, crude oil, conventional natural gas and anthracite. Both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) have noted that maximal production of crude oil was passed in 2006-2008. The USA has already passed maximal production of natural gas as has Europe (excluding Russia). In Russia, the large gasfields in Western Siberia have passed maximal production. The critical factor determining when Russia as a whole passes maximal natural gas production is the level of future investment. The USA has the world’s largest coal reserves and has passed maximal production of anthracite. The fact that the highest quality fossil fuel reserves have reached/passed their maximal production means that carbon dioxide emissions from these fractions have now reached their maximum rate.
Non-conventional forms of fossil fuel production are generally so specialized that the products are primarily used close to the site of production where they cause greater environmental damage and carbon dioxide emissions than conventional fossil fuel production. This means that nations that have greater volumes of unconventional fossil fuels must, in future, take greater responsibility for the environment than other nations. For unconventional oil, the greatest responsibility rests with Canada and Venezuela while the greatest responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions from coal rests with the USA, Russia, China, India, Australia and South Africa. The fact is that only a relatively small number of nations will determine the quantity of future carbon dioxide emissions. The greatest single contribution to reducing emissions would be for the USA and Russia to agree to not use half of their remaining coal reserves. The future’s climate challenge must be solved locally rather than globally.
Biographical Sketch
Kjell Aleklett, physics professor at Uppsala University, leader of the research group Global Energy. In 2002 he was among the founders of ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas and is now president of ASPO International, www.peakoil.net. Research on Peak Oil, Peak Gas and Peak Coal began in 2002 and he published in 2003 together with Colin Campbell, the first peer-reviewed article on Peak Oil in Energy and Minerals. Kjell Aleklett has testified about Peak Oil at committee hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate in Australia. Researcher at the Global Energy is a world leader in the field and the group's research can be downloaded from the website www.physics.uu.se / given. During the period 1971-2002 Kjell Aleklett area of research was fundamental nuclear physics and for 20 years he worked with Nobel laureate Glenn T. Seaborg.
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Social development links to the exploitation of energy resources. As a consequence of this fact, buildings, both residential and services sector play an outstanding roll on the energy consumption of our current society. Therefore, buildings have a very significant demand of heating, refrigeration system, warm sanitary water access, lighting, ventilation, etc.
In this sense, the combination of different bioclimatic strategies in existing buildings establishes the way to achieve the reduction of energy consumption and the decrease of its produced CO2 emissions. In fact, we have worked on a five floor building in the center-west of Spain, where Central Service of SES (Mérida, Badajoz) is located. The study is based in the influence of the decrease of CO2 emissions from the air-conditioning system by means of an absorption equipment use with biomass thermal support.
The current research identifies the different variables that determine the demand of energy in the air conditioning system of the building. It drives on an optimum parameter combination that allows adjust a correct running building and a good level of comfort to the decrease of energy use and the CO2 emissions reduction.
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In this study, design of a direct type rotary coal dryer is carried out. In design, first a natural gas burner is used for producing required heat of coal drying. Because of high natural gas consumption, it has a vital importance in today’s competitive economy to find an alternative source and minimize cost of products. For this reason, a parabolic trough solar system is employed as a heat source, in order to reduce the fuel consumption and the environmental impact of the conventional drying systems. A costs/advantages analysis of the implementation is performed. By applying the parabolic solar system to the coal dryer, the results show that; annual energy saving and prevented CO2 emissions from emitting to the atmosphere are 637,700 m3NG and 1,152 ton CO2 per year, respectively. Moreover, annual cost saving with considering carbon credits and payback time are evaluated to be 376,500 $ per year and 6.6 years, respectively.
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In this study, the variability and trends of surface radiation over the Iberian Peninsula using ERA40 reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are examined. Monthly means of surface incident and net shortwave radiation for 40 years are computed and analyzed. Deviations from the temporal mean for each month and for each year are computed and variations discussed. The relation between the interannual variability of solar radiation over Iberian Peninsula and the cloud cover is analyzed. The trends of surface radiation for each month during the past decades are computed and discussed.
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Ships are complex energy plants which are equipped with several energy producing and consuming machineries. Almost all of the ships have main and auxiliary engines consuming fossil fuels to meet the power demands of all ship operations including propulsion, heating, cooling, pumping etc. All types of energy losses on board caused by different sources such as hull friction, air draft of ship, heat losses, pressure losses of fittings and pipes and engines energy losses are determined and additional power requirements of engines are specified to compensate these losses. The optimum design and operational criteria are discussed to decrease total energy loses. Furthermore, the costs of fuel price and environmental damages due to exhaust gas emissions are specified by reason of additional fuel consumptions.
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The effect of phase change material (PCM) integration in building components is investigated in mild climates. The incorporation of PCMs in building materials is particularly interesting since it permit to the thermal storage to become a part of the building structure and is completely passive. Simulations in a typical family house were made and the contribution of PCMs on different buildings components was analyzed. Results show important reduction in cooling energy even in those climates characterized by low day/night temperature swings. Even if large quantities of PCM are necessary, a reduction of 20% can be obtained with reasonable thickness of PCM wallboards. The best position for PCMs is found to be on surfaces that undergo large temperature variations (connected to the outdoor air) like the ceiling for example. This position present the better compromise between energy reduction and PCM quantity used.
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In this paper, a forced circulation solar water heater (SWH) has been studied both experimentally and numerically. Outdoor condition is based on ambient climate of Tabriz. Flat plate collector was kept facing the equator at a tilt of λ+15° (λ is latitude of the place and λ=38.7 N for Tabriz) from the horizontal for getting maximum radiation. The Investigated system is consisted of a collector with total absorber area of 1.82 (m2), a storage tank of 60 (liter) capacity, 12 tubes and an overhead tank placed at a higher level respect to the rest of the system. Also, a numerical model was developed to simulation of SWH. To discrete equations, finite volume method is employed. In addition, a numerical model of SWH with elliptical tubes was developed and results show that there is no significant difference in heat transfer rate between circular and elliptical tubes. Two major circumstances were investigated in this study namely parallel and series coupling of collectors. Finally, the simulation outcomes are compared with the experimental data and differences between numerical and experimental results have been reported.