An Evaluation of Heating Strategy, Thermal Environment, and Carbon Emissions in Three UK Churches

Energy, emissions, economic analysis of air-source heat pump with radiant heating system in hot-summer and cold-winter zone in China

The BRICS nations-Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-have grown significantly in importance over the past few decades, playing a vital role in the development and growth of the global economy. This expansion has not been without cost, either, since these countries' concern over environmental deterioration has risen sharply. Both researchers and decision-makers have focused a lot of attention on the connection between economic growth and ecological sustainability. By using nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach, the complex relationships were analyzed between important economic indicators-such as gross domestic product (GDP), ecological innovations (EI), energy consumption (ENC), institutional performance (IP), and trade openness (TOP)-and their effect on carbon emissions and nitrous oxide emissions in the BRICS countries from 1990 to 2021, this study seeks to contribute to this important dialog. Principal component analysis is formed for technological innovations and institutional performance using six (ICT service exports as a percentage of service exports, computer communications as a percentage of commercial service exports, fixed telephone subscriptions per 100 people, internet users as a percentage of the population, number of patent applications, and R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP) and twelve (government stability, investment profile, socioeconomic conditions, internal conflict, external conflict, military in politics, control of corruption, religious tensions, ethnic tensions, law and order, bureaucracy quality, and democratic accountability) distinct indicators, respectively. The results of nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag estimation show that increase in economic growth would increase carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions. The positive and negative shocks in trade openness have positive and significant impact on carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions in BRICS countries. Furthermore, the positive shock energy consumptions have positive and significant effect on Brazil and India when carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions are used. However, EKC exists in BRICS countries when carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions are used. According to long-term estimation, energy consumption and technological innovations in the BRICS countries show a strong and adverse link with nitrous oxide and a favorable relationship with carbon dioxide emissions. In the long run, environmental indicators are seen to have a major and unfavorable impact in BRICS nations. Finally, it is proposed that BRICS nations can assure environmental sustainability if they support creative activities, enhance their institutions, and support free trade policies.

The impact of thermal mass on building energy consumption

This study examines the dynamic impact of financial development, energy consumption, trade openness, and economic growth on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Nigeria. We applied autoregressive distributed lag bound testing technique for the period of 1971–2010. The empirical result shows a long-run cointegration relationship among the variables. The long-run estimation result, however, reveals that, economic growth, development of the financial sector and energy consumption have a positive and significant impact on carbon dioxide emissions, whereas trade openness has negative and significant impact on carbon dioxide emissions. The finding suggest that the government should emphasize programs and policies that reduce carbon dioxide emissions by opening the trade sector considering the roles such openness plays in reducing environmental degradation in the country, which directly enhances environmental quality.

IntroductionHeating is one of the main factors leading to high energy consumption and serious carbon emissions in buildings. The clean heating system formed by the coupling of phase change building maintenance structure and solar heating system can improve the thermal storage density of the building maintenance structure, while reducing energy consumption in winter while maintaining a comfortable room temperature through stable energy security.MethodsTherefore, a phase change radiation terminal heating (PCRTH) system with the phase change radiation module as the terminal and the solar energy and air energy as the clean heat source is established in this study. Nanjing, Tianjin and Shenyang in China were selected as the study zones which correspond to the hot summer and cold winter zone, the cold zone and the severe cold zone respectively. The operational effect of the PCRTH system in different climate zones was studied, and the parameters of the PCRTH system were optimized by the GenOpt program combined with Hooke-Jeeves optimization algorithm.ResultsThe analysis results show that the cascade phase change radiation terminals in the three zones reduced room temperature fluctuation, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, but the heating cost was higher. After the Hooke-Jeeves optimization algorithm was used to optimize the PCRTH system parameters in three zones, the PCRTH system heating cost was reduced, and the PCRTH system energy consumption and PCRTH system carbon dioxide emissions were further reduced.DiscussionTherefore, the building heating system composed of PCM maintenance structure and renewable energy has great application advantages in maintaining a comfortable room temperature and improving heating system energy conservation and environmental protection.

<p indent="0mm">Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, which have been around since the early 20th century, were originally designed to support fine industrial processes and thus pursue the goal of uniform, steady-state environmental control. And the HVAC systems for civil buildings which were widely used later followed such an idea to create uniform and steady-state thermal environments. For decades, a large number of domestic and foreign research results have shown that the uniform and steady thermal environment is not necessarily the most beneficial to people’s comfort and health, but it needs more energy consumption. As one of the earliest scientific theories formed in the field of ergonomics in built environments, the theory of human thermal comfort has effectively guided the development of the building thermal environment control methods, technologies, and products globally during the process of industrialization. In the new era of global warming and low-carbon buildings, the theoretical science of human thermal comfort undertakes the new mission of promoting the discipline of building technology and achieving the goals to develop “low-carbon” and “healthy” buildings. The future development of human thermal comfort research will have two important directions. One is the in-depth scientific understanding of the complex relationship between human and the multi-factor thermal environment, not only for human comfort needs, but also paying more attention to the impact on health. The other is the technological innovation that these new scientific understandings may bring, which can not only enhance personalized thermal comfort of people, but also effectively reduce the energy demand of thermal environment control in buildings. The first development direction above requires the combination of traditional engineering with medicine and public health, that is, the intersection of medicine and industry. The second development direction requires interdisciplinary cooperation between the discipline of built environment and other engineering disciplines such as materials, information, and energy. Based on the review of the development process of human thermal comfort as well as the research practice of our team, we have formed the following prospects centering on the above two future directions. (1) Compared with steady-state thermal environments, the dynamic thermal environment is more in line with people’s thermal comfort needs. The natural outdoor environment is a typical dynamic thermal environment, which is often more pleasant than steady neutral indoor environments. Attention should be paid to the use of suitable outdoor natural conditions, or the technologies to imitate natural conditions when creating indoor environments, so as to enhance people’s pleasure. (2) By providing local heating or local cooling, the human body can achieve thermal comfort in a cold or hot environment, so that the indoor comfortable temperature range can be greatly expanded. Therefore, future HVAC systems should focus on providing individual scale “precise thermal service” for indoor personnel, and develop personalized and wearable individual thermal comfort equipment, which can not only meet the different thermal comfort needs of people, but also help to save building energy. (3) Staying in a neutral thermal environment for a long time could weaken the heat stress ability of the human body, while moderate cold or hot exposure is beneficial to maintain human health. In the future, the indoor thermal environment system should be able to connect sensors to monitor the key thermal physiological indicators of the human body, and then support users to carry out cold or hot exposure exercise in accordance with health needs by adjusting the indoor thermal environment, so as to enhance their heat stress ability and keep healthy.

Houses of straw

Does new energy consumption conducive to controlling fossil energy consumption and carbon emissions?-Evidence from China

Bar diagram, 186 Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN), 84 Baseline model, 114-118 empirical calibration, 119-120 impact of increase in stringency of environmental norms, 118-119 impact of technological advancement in production of clean energy, 119 impact of technological progress towards fuel efficiency, 119 Basic Services for Urban Poor (BSUP), 294

Population growth and trends are centrally important to the environment because it helps to determine the environmental impact of human activities. In this study, the World Bank database has been used. Here, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and energy intensity (EI) are considered as environmental indicators. The population indicators are the proportion of the population aged 15-64 years, and the percentage of the urban population. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is considered a development indicator in a country. This study tries to identify the association between population environment and development. Correlation analysis has been employed to know association and Path analysis is used to determine the important factors for environmental impacts such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The result presents that the zero-order correlation exists among energy intensity (EI), the proportion of the population aged 15-64 (P15-64), urbanization (UR), gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (US$), total population (P) ) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in Bangladesh and India. It is observed that 8 paths for Bangladesh and 7 paths for India out of each 12 hypothesized paths are found to be statistically significant. In Bangladesh, the total effects of exogenous variables like as energy intensity (X1) and population aged 15-64 (X2) are observed negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6) and the remaining variable like as urbanization (X3) is observed as positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions. However, in India total effects of these two exogenous variables population aged 15-64 (X2) and urbanization (X3) are observed positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6) and the remaining variable like as energy intensity (X1) is observed negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6). The total effects of endogenous variables like as GDP per capita (X4) show a negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions and population (X5) shows a positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions. The study demonstrates that CO2 emission is important for environmental impact in Bangladesh and India. There is a strong association between population, GDP per capita, energy consumption and urbanization and CO2 emission in Bangladesh and India. The factors of CO2 emissions play an important role in environmental degradation. Thus, attention should be focused on using low energy consumption, and proper urbanization, particularly on modern technology which assures fewer uses of CO2 emissions in Bangladesh and India.

This study investigated the relationship between energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and macroeconomic variables in Somalia with data spanning from 1990 to 2019 using ARDL model. The study found a negative long-run relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption in Somalia, suggesting that improving access to clean energy can reduce the gradual rise of carbon dioxide emissions. The study also found that rising industrial value-added had a significant positive impact on energy consumption. Furthermore, findings from Cholesky's variance decomposition showed that 13.13% of future fluctuations in energy consumption are due to shocks in carbon dioxide emission, 33.63% of future fluctuations in carbon dioxide emissions are due to shocks in energy consumption, 40.63% of future fluctuations in industrialization are due to shocks in energy consumption and 41.23% of future fluctuations in population are due to shocks in energy consumption. There was evidence of a bidirectional causality between: energy consumption and population. The study suggests adding renewable energy technologies to the energy portfolio. This would help reduce reliance on unstable energy sources and reduce the chance that changes in commodity prices will interrupt the energy supply, which eventually would help reduce the effects of climate change.

Carbon emissions from energy consumption of Shandong province from 1995 to 2012 are calculated. Three zero-residual decomposition models (LMDI, MRCI and Shapley value models) are introduced for decomposing carbon emissions. Based on the results, Kendall coordination coefficient method is employed for testing their compatibility, and an optimal weighted combination decomposition model is constructed for improving the objectivity of decomposition. STIRPAT model is applied to evaluate the impact of each factor on carbon emissions. The results show that, using 1995 as the base year, the cumulative effects of population, per capita GDP, energy consumption intensity, and energy consumption structure of Shandong province in 2012 are positive, while the cumulative effect of industrial structure is negative. Per capita GDP is the largest driver of the increasing carbon emissions and has a great impact on carbon emissions; energy consumption intensity is a weak driver and has certain impact on carbon emissions; population plays a weak driving role, but it has the most significant impact on carbon emissions; energy consumption structure is a weak driver of the increasing carbon emissions and has a weak impact on carbon emissions; industrial structure has played a weak inhibitory role, and its impact on carbon emissions is great.

Study on Carbon Emission Estimation and Reduction Methods of Electric Vehicle Battery Packs in Whole Life Cycle

A multi-factor efficiency perspective to the relationships among world GDP, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions

The first objective is to examine the trend analysis of the relationship between energy consumption and carbon dioxide on one hand and the trend analysis of the relationship between economic growth and CO2 emission on the other hand for the period of 1970-2017. The second objective is to determine the long-run relationship and direction of causality among the variables. To achieve this objective, the study used Granger causality test and the results shows a bi-directional causality between urban population and Energy consumption. The third objective is to examine the impact of urbanization, energy consumption, economic growth on carbon dioxide emission in Nigeria. To achieve this, the study employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) test approach. The results show that in the short run, energy consumption and the previous lag of economic growth have a positive and significant impact on carbon dioxide emission in Nigeria. Only urban population has a negative but significant impact on CO2 emission in Nigeria. In the long run however, urbanization is still statistically significant but negative while energy consumption and economic growth still has a positive and significant impact on CO2 emission. The major reason is that the bulk of the country’s energy consumption is from non-renewable means. Thus, the study recommend appropriate measures and mitigation policies needs to be put in place to reduce the damage on the environment and to prevent further destruction.