Chapter 2 - Energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions against the background of Polish economic growth

Our paper focuses on the renewable energy and EU 2020 target for energy efficiency in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We study the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in these two EU Member States through the prism of the Europe 2020 strategy and the 3 × 20 climate and energy package and economic growth (represented by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that allows to measure the national dynamics and provide cross-country comparisons) without attributing specific attention to issues such as the electrification of transport or heating, and thence leaving them outside the scope of this paper. Both Czech Republic and Slovakia are two post-Communist countries that still face the consequences of economic transformation and struggle with the optimal management of natural resources. Both countries encountered profound system transformation after 1989 that are apparent in all three measures of sustainable development used in our study. We show that it is unlikely that the planned increase in renewable energy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia will reach its targets, but they might succeed in reducing their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Our findings show that the energy intensity of Czech and Slovak economies increased in the early 2000s and then stabilized at a level about twice of the EU average. It appears that this value is likely to remain the same in the forthcoming years. However, implementation of GHG emissions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia may be at risk in case the proper energy policy is not maintained. Moreover, our results show how the increase in the share of renewable energy and improvement in energy efficiency go hand-in-hand with mining and exploiting the energy sources that is notorious for the transition economies. We also demonstrate that a proper energy policy is required for effectively reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. There is a need for commitments made by relevant stakeholders and policymakers targeted at achieving sustainable economic growth and energy efficiency. In addition, we demonstrate that there is a need for maintaining a proper balance between economic development and environmental protection, which is a must for the EU sustainable energy development agenda and all its accompanying targets for all its Member States.

Supply chain solutions are based on first-mile and last-mile deliveries; their efficiency significantly influences the total cost of operation. Drone technologies make it possible to improve first-mile and last-mile operations, but the design and optimization of these solutions offers new challenges. Within the frame of this article, the author focuses on the impact of integrated first-mile/last-mile drone-based delivery services from trucks, analyzing the impact of solutions on energy efficiency, the environmental impact and sustainability. The author describes a novel model of drone-based integrated first-mile/last-mile services which makes it possible to analyze the impact of different typical solutions on sustainability. As the numerical examples and computational results show, the integrated first-mile-last-mile drone-based service from trucks could lead to a significant reduction in energy consumption and a reduction in virtual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which would lead to a more sustainable logistics system. The numerical analysis of the scenarios shows that the increased application of drones and the integration of first-mile and last-mile delivery operations could decrease energy consumption by about 87%. This reduction in energy consumption, depending on the generation source of electricity, significantly increases the reduction in greenhouse gas emission.

Kaya identity for analysis of the main drivers of GHG emissions and feasibility to implement EU “20–20–20” targets in the Baltic States

In conventional foundry, engineers generally consider the quality of casting part as the most essential issue and regard the energy consumption and Green House Gas (GHGs) emission as the auxiliary ones. This usually causes large amount of energy consumption as a result of the inefficient casting processes used and increases the production costs and environmental pollution. This paper presents the new CRIMSON process where its facility and melting process were compared with conventional melt furnaces and aluminium alloy melting process. An actual case was investigated to reveal quantitatively how the conventional foundry wastes energy and increases GHGs emission, and what the improvement of energy efficiency and the GHGs emission reduction can be achieved using the new CRIMSON process. The results of this investigation will help the foundry engineer recognize the importance of energy saving and environmental protection and show how to utilise this new process to reduce production costs and carbon footprint without decreasing the quality of the cast part. Key words: Energy consumption; GHGs emission; Furnace; Aluminium; Sanding casting; Melting; CRIMSON

Mitigating Curtailment and Carbon Emissions through Load Migration between Data Centers

Today, Europe rises towards challenge known as the “20-20-20” targets of “The 2020 climate and energy package”. Public lighting is one of those energy segments where energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions can be decreased, focusing on 20% improvement in the EU's energy efficiency and 20% reduction in EU's greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels. Public lighting in Croatia consumes up to 440.314.330 kWh annually. This represents 2,8% of Croatia's total annual consumption. Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund promotes energy efficiency in public lighting in Croatia by announcing tenders and calls of proposals. Non-refundable financial aid is offered to municipalities in 40–80% of the eligible investment costs for reconstruction of public lighting systems or building new ones. Bearing in mind Fund's “Three main targets” (energy efficiency, environmental protection and traffic safety), it is obvious that simple replacement of old lights with new ones isn't acceptable. Public lighting, in terms of traffic safety, means meeting with minimal performance requirements of EN 13201 Standard. The Fund defines maximum acceptable performance requirements in terms of energy efficiency and environmental protection. Balancing between those targets represents a challenge in construction of new public lighting systems and an art in reconstruction of the old ones. This work discusses main challenges in planning (re)construction of public lighting, pointing towards problems and obstacles in tailoring ideal solutions for individual situations. Special attention is given to the details that make the difference between energy efficient public lighting and one that is energy efficient, environmentally acceptable and traffic safe.

The purpose of this research is to empirically reveal the effect of external technology R&D cooperation network diversity (ETRDCND) on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction and energy saving of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Besides this, this study aims at analyzing the roles of production time reduction and absorptive capacity in the relationship between SMEs’ ETRDCND and their GHG emission reduction and energy saving. GHG emission and energy usage have been playing a crucial role in aggravating global warming. Global warming results in big problems such as worldwide unusual weather and health disorders. SMEs play a substantial role in the industrial growth of the global economy, which increases GHG emission and energy consumption. By performing the ordinary least squares regression with the data of 3300 South Korean SMEs, this research reveals four points. First, ETRDCND positively influences SMEs’ GHG emission reduction and energy saving. Second, production time reduction perfectly mediates the relationship between SMEs’ ETRDCND and their GHG emission reduction and energy saving. Third, the mediating role of production time reduction in this relationship is moderated by SMEs’ absorptive capacity. Fourth, ETRDCND significantly influences SMEs’ GHG emission reduction and their energy saving only if SMEs possess their own absorptive capacity.

Analysis of the Dependence on Economic Growth in China to Energy Consumption

The purpose of this special issue is to collect and publish a representative set of manuscripts from the growing community of scholars developing computational approaches to understand and improve energy efficiency in buildings. We are grateful to the editors of the ASCE Journal of Computing of Civil Engineering for supporting this effort and to the academic community for the strong response to our call for papers. It is our hope that by collecting research on this topic, in this special issue the research community can identify synergies between disparate but related research topics, identify and develop new research collaborations, and, ultimately, allow research focused on understanding and reducing energy consumption in the built environment to evolve as a result. Residential and commercial buildings account for about 40% of all energy consumption in the United States. In dense urban settings this figure can increase to up to 80%. Achieving the challenge put forward by the current presidential administration of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will largely have to come from reductions in energy use by buildings. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) “Energy Technology Perspectives 2010” report describes that energy efficiency measures can make the largest contribution to reduce energy use over the next 40 years. Civil engineering professionals, being the designers, creators, and stewards of the built environment, will play a key role in the solutions to better understand and reduce energy use. We are excited by the range and diversity of the topics in the special issue, which are listed alphabetically by first author last name, as follows: • “Impact of Social Network Type and Structure on Modeling Normative Energy Use Behavior Interventions” by Kyle Anderson, SangHyun Lee, and Carol Menassa; • “Framework to Evaluate Energy-Saving Potential from Occupancy Interventions in Typical Commercial Buildings in the United States” by Elie Azar and Carol C. Menassa; • “Demonstrating the Impact of the Occupant on Building Performance” by Caroline Clevenger, John Haymaker, and Maral Jalili; • “Automated Diagnostics and Visualization of Potential Energy Performance Problems in Existing Buildings Using Energy Performance Augmented Reality Models” by Mani Golparvar-Fard and Youngjib Ham; • “Network Ecoinformatics: Development of a Social Ecofeedback System to Drive Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings” by Rimas Gulbinas, Rishee K. Jain, John E. Taylor, Gabriel Peschiera, and Mani Golparvar-Fard; • “Human-Building Interaction Framework for Personalized Thermal Comfort-Driven Systems in Office Buildings” by Farrokh Jazizadeh, Ali Ghahramani, Burcin Becerik-Gerber, Tatiana Kichkaylo, and Michael Orosz; • “Data-Driven Benchmarking of Building Energy Efficiency Utilizing Statistical Frontier Models” by Amir Kavousian and Ram Rajagopal; • “Domain-Specific Querying Formalisms for Retrieving Information about HVAC Systems” by Xuesong Liu, Burcu Akinci, Mario Berges, and James H. Garrett Jr.; and • “Conceptual Framework to Optimize Building Energy Consumption by Coupling Distributed Energy Simulation and Occupancy Models” by Carol C. Menassa, Vineet R. Kamat, SangHyun Lee, Elie Azar, Chen Feng, and Kyle Anderson. In addition, a paper titled “CAD-Centric Attribution Methodology for Multidisciplinary Optimization Environments: Enabling Parametric Attribution for Efficient Design Space Formulation and Evaluation” by Benjamin Welle, John Haymaker, Martin Fischer, and Vladimir Bazjanac will be published in a forthcoming issue. We close this preamble with the hope that this special issue serves as an introduction and becomes one in a series of many future issues focused on special topics in this domain. The opportunity for research on computational approaches to understand and reduce energy consumption in the built environment is vast and research on the topic is nascent. As civil engineers we have a tremendous opportunity for our research to have an impact on an issue of both technological/scientific importance and societal importance. We hope that future special issues can address more specialized subtopics in detail as we work collectively to address energy consumption in the built environment.

As a party to the Paris Agreement Russia pledged not to exceed the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions’ level of 70–75% to that existed in 1990. Energy efficiency improvement, structural shifts in production and the increase of Russian forests’ carbon sink capacity were the key contributors to curbing the GHG emissions in Russia during the last 25 years. The decreasing carbon intensity of the GDP was a natural result of economic growth and implementation of voluntary business projects to improve the efficiency of the industrial sector using investments in modernization of the production facilities. Russia disposes significant potential to reduce GHG emissions, but the feasibility and efficiency of respective measures should be evaluated considering the implications to economic growth. Implementation of the socalled aggressive scenario to halt global temperature growth at any cost within 1.5 °C as compared to the pre-industrial era is unacceptable to Russia from socioeconomic perspective given its leading to lowering the average annual GDP growth rate by 1.8 percentage points by 2050. In addition, tough measures to reduce GHG emissions involve energy costs skyrocketing to unprecedented levels – from the current 13% of the GDP to 30% of the GDP by 2040. Such a burden would hardly be compatible with economic growth or, in any case, provide for the economic growth’s providing for improvement of the communities’ standard of living. Russia needs the long-term development strategy with low GHG emissions level focused on improving the quality of living, modernizing and increasing the competitiveness of the national economy. Such a strategy rests on the following principles: 1) Russia has been the world leader in the GHG emissions reduction since 1990, so no solid reason exists for its soonest switching to excessively stringent climate commitments which result in ungrounded additional restrictions to its socio-economic development pace; 2) The core impediment to sustainable development of Russia is not a high level of the GHG emissions, but economic stagnation. Given that the reasonable scenario of the GHG emissions reduction implies the development path that allows the national economy to grow at a rate of 3% average annual GDP as the least; 3) Action priorities in the area of the GHG sinking should involve improvement of the LULUCF sector potential by promoting sound natural resources management policy and voluntary projects to increase carbon sink and reservoir capacity of the forest and wetland ecosystems; 4) Action priorities to reduce GHG emissions assume the imperative and expediency of economic stimulating of the structural change in the energy sector that involves production and technological chains within the country and do not provide for excessive price growth. Such change includes increasing use of natural gas (as the most “clean” fossil fuel) and nuclear energy (given Russia’s leading position in the nuclear technology area), as well as cogeneration of electricity and heat. Pronounced increase in using renewables, energy storage systems and electric vehicles should be acceptable only if production of these is successfully localized and costs are reduced. Sustainable economic growth is a prerequisite for intensifying energy efficiency improvement as it involves modernization of the production facilities and using available and competitive industrial capacities. Specific measures targeted at energy savings will be inefficient given economic stagnation. A reasonable (smart) scenario of the Russia long-term economic development with the low GHG emissions level should comply with the principles above and its driving force propelled by structural and technological modernization of the economy that fully involves economic potential of the energy resource and power sector. The implementation of this development scenario would allow Russia to comply with the Paris Agreement national commitments while ensuring economic growth at the pace not yielding to that of the global average.

Sweetness and Power - Public Policies and the ‘Biofuels Frenzy’

Energy-related GHG emission in agriculture of the European countries: An application of the Generalized Divisia Index

This study aimed to investigate the impact of green energy consumption, energy efficiency, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and trade (import and export) on greenhouse gas emissions( GHG) in Vietnam between 1990 and 2019. This study investigates the long-term cointegration relationship to find out the impact of renewable energy consumption, energy efficiency, trade, economic development, and foreign direct investment on climate change in Vietnam. The research results show a long-term relationship between the above variables and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. These findings highlight the profound importance of renewable energy consumption for ecologically sustainable development in Vietnam and serve as an important resource for other countries worldwide. world when it comes to ecological security. This study recommends the use of environmentally friendly and energy-saving technologies, the use of renewable energy to mitigate climate change and the implementation of the most recent government policies to neutralise greenhouse gas emissions to achieve sustainable development goals.

Since economic development is often associated with an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, it is especially important to answer the question of whether it is possible to achieve sustainable economic development and improve energy efficiency at the same time, which implies a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this study was to build models that can help find the environmental and economic determinants of energy efficiency in European countries. An ecological and economic determinants of energy efficiency indicators of 38 European countries were found based on panel regression models. The models were built based on statistical data characterizing the level of their economic development and consumption of diverse types of energy for 1995-2021. To obtain the necessary approximations of energy efficiency indicators, one of three types of models was used: the random effects method, the fixed effects method, or the pooled model. For this, appropriate statistical tests were used. As a result, it was found that the factors that have a statistically significant impact on the energy intensity of GDP in European countries include the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions, unemployment rate, primary energy consumption per capita, and gross electricity production per capita. The findings showed that determinants of primary energy consumption were domestic consumption of solid fossil fuels per capita, domestic natural gas consumption per capita, and primary energy consumption per capita. The study results generally confirm the modern-day thesis that economic development can be achieved while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The monitoring of factors that have a statistically significant impact on the indicators under consideration can become an essential element of the modern energy efficiency management system of the national economies of European countries

To cool a sweltering earth: Does energy efficiency improvement offset the climate impacts of lifestyle?