From thermoeconomics to environomics and beyond

Abstract

Modern energy systems are more and more based on integrated technologies in a world evolving towards increasing concerns not only for economics but also for environmental issues with a growing focus on resources and emissions. In parallel, information technologies including advanced simulation and optimisation algorithms develop at a rapid pace. Thermoeconomics based on either the First Law or exergy, together with cost factors distributed through its equipment, also evolved during the last 30 years. However modern muti-objective evolutionary optimisation techniques, extending the capacity to tackle optimisation considering a growing number of parameters including the internalization of the costs of emissions of whole systems has also emerged. The latter is called environomics. So far, the supply of energy services was essentially dominated by fossil-based resources with a high focus on operational costs. The new trends towards renewable energies requires a growing need to consider the embedded exergies since renewable energy, like solar energy, is economically free and operational costs are inherently low. While economic factors can vary over a broad spectrum throughout the years of operation, the embedded exergies are more stable values, particularly because the systems are built in a known economic and energetic environment. A new class of methods is only emerging to deal with more complete exergy approaches to formulate more holistic exergy life cycle analyses. Those should provide a lower bound of the expected exergy payback over the lifetime of the systems to be compared with thermoeconomic or environomic optima. It is still a huge challenge ahead to provide practical tools to do it.