Energy Efficiency Opportunities Research Articles

Europar Batasuneko Energia-testuingurua. Eraginkortasun Energetikoa Industrian

Europar Batasunak (EB) energia merkatu aldakor bati aurre egin behar dio eta, ildo horretan, «Horizon 2020» deritzon programa jarri du indarrean. Bertan, 2020ra arteko epealdia ezarri dute honako xede hauek bideratu ahal izateko: (1) kontsumitutako energiaren % 20ak jatorri berriztagarria izan behar du, (2) eraginkortasun energetikoa hobetu behar da energia primarioaren erabilera % 20 murrizteko eta, azkenik, (3) 1990. urteko balioekin alderaturik, berotegi efektuko gasak % 20 murriztu behar dira. Eraginkortasun energetikoa bideratzeko indarrean dauden «Eraginkortasun Energetiko Plana» eta «Eraginkortasun Energetiko Direktiba 2012/27/EU» definitu dira. Bestetik, aldaketa klimatikoari aurre egiteko eta emisioak murrizteko EBk aplikatutako «cap and trade» mekanismoa eta «2020 klima eta energia paketea» azaldu dira. Dena den, ikerkuntza eta garapen teknologikoak ezinbestekoak dira «Horizon 2020» xedeak betetzeko, beraz, SET-planaren jarduerak ere aztertu dira. Horrez gain, eraginkortasun energetikoak industrian dituen aukerak aztertu dira eta, adibide moduan, SPIREk bultzatutako proiektuak deskribatu dira. Azkenik, EBk 2030 eta 2050 urteetarako proposatutako helburuak eta ikerkuntza lerroak aztertu dira.

Review of Energy Efficiency Technologies in the Food Industry: Trends, Barriers, and Opportunities

The industry sector has a significant responsibility for the depletion of fossil fuels and emission of carbon dioxide. Thus, several initiatives have been implemented by the industry sector to mitigate those issues. One initiative corresponds to the implementation of energy efficiency strategies. In particular, the food industry is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and the food demand is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Therefore, developing energy efficiency strategies for this particular industrial sector is crucial. This paper investigates the different opportunities for energy efficiency in the food industry. It first provides a brief overview of the various food industries and related energy consumption. Then, the different options for energy efficiency in the thermal and electric sector are discussed. New trends and opportunities, arising from industry 4.0 and demand response, are also presented.

Ranking energy performance opportunities obtained with energy audit in dairies

The food industry uses a considerable amount of energy and that amount has been constantly growing with further developments in the sector. The growth of the milk processing industries with the production of dairy products has followed the trends in the food industry in general. The authors made a systematization of the literature data on the most common energy efficiency opportunities (measures) in diaries. Authors also present a methodology for conducting an energy audit in dairies based on ISO 50002 which includes a multi-criteria analysis for ranking energy efficiency opportunities. The proposed methodology was applied to a case study dairy in central Serbia. Taking into account interactions between opportunities, implementation of the proposed energy saving opportunities can ensure 11-15% energy savings for electricity and 20-23% of heat energy annually.

Encouraging energy efficiency in United Kingdom independent retail? The case of the butcher, fishmonger and cycle-shop

The UK non-domestic sector accounts for 16% of energy use and major cuts are needed to meet a ‘net zero’ CO2 emissions target by 2050. Policy and research to date have focused on technical potential and there are gaps in understanding social contexts, which are key to energy efficiency improvement. Furthermore, SMEs have been overlooked, despite the need for concerted action here to meet targets. In this study, mixed-method case study research is undertaken with three independent retailers (a butcher, fishmonger and cycle-shop) to explore energy management and energy efficiency adoption. Building on the 4Cs “Concern, Conditions and Capacity within a Community” (4Cs) framework developed by Janda, this study has identified the interrelationships between Cs and explored the underlying factors that appear to be more important in determining responses to energy efficiency opportunities. Reflecting on the 4Cs, improving energy efficiency within this sector is complex, so it is perhaps not surprising that energy efficiency adoption has been low to date. This study highlights the importance of the ‘social’ within a socio-technical context. Whilst technical conditions are invariably the most important factor in engineering calculations of energy efficiency potential, they appear to be of considerably less importance than social contexts in practice. The findings suggest that a greater focus on social context within a socio-technical frame could help make future policy interventions more effective. Whilst some of these findings may be sector-specific, several are likely to be transferable to other SMEs, retail and hospitality organisations.

The hidden benefits of stand-alone PV module efficiency limits

Energy and cost savings from a PV installation in a dwelling is influenced by a number of variables including occupant behaviour and the feedback mechanism accompanying the PV system. This monitoring device can reveal the energy efficiency opportunities present in real-time. The same way an in-home smart metre shows how much energy is being consumed by a household, a PV metre highlights both the generated power and the amount being used at any point in time. Results from a field survey revealed that post-PV installation, there was increased electricity awareness and energy conservation amongst the households. It was further found that in addition to the presence of a feedback metre, conscious energy management efforts arising from the part of the PV adopters and users led to the energy and cost savings. Most importantly, it was revealed that the energy savings were primarily driven by PV efficiency limits. These findings were used to develop a PV efficiency cycle demonstrating how the energy conservation and use efficiency occurred. The study showed the implications and proposed ways by which PV can be promoted in emerging economies.

The Potential Energy Efficiency Improvements for the Italian Pulp and Paper Industry

Pulp and paper production is an energy intensive process, that accounts for about 9 % of industrial final energy use in Italy in 2016. While the energy intensity of the total manufacturing sector has decreased by 51 % over the last twenty years, pulp and paper industry has shown a slower improvement, of only 4 %. The sector presents wide opportunities for improving energy efficiency and, for this purpose, adequate knowledge of the energy saving potentials and their costs are essential prerequisites to design effective policies. In this paper, after assessing the current technologies and energy performance of the Italian pulp and paper industry, we identify the technical and economic potentials for fuel and electricity savings in the sector. While many studies in this field use data on efficient technologies from available literature, surveys or even theoretical estimates, the added value of this paper is the use of real data coming from 110 energy efficiency measures implemented in the field by the pulp and paper companies under the Italian White Certificates Scheme.The analysis indicates that the energy saving potentials, under conservative technology penetration rates, amount to 0.88 TWh for electricity and 4.47 TWh for fossil fuels consumption: such savings equal 12.6 % and 18.6 % of the sector electricity and fuel demand, and can be translated into mitigated CO2 emissions of 353 kt.

Do energy audits help SMEs to realize energy-efficiency opportunities?

This paper contributes to the understanding of the determinants of energy audits and to the role of energy audits in promoting energy-efficiency measures in SMEs. It benefits from the data collected within the European Investment Bank Surveys in 2017 and 2018, involving information about energy audits and energy-efficiency investments of some 12,500 signatures from EU28 Member States per year. Our analysis suggests that the decision of firms to conduct an energy audit is driven mainly by their characteristics, such as size, productivity, capital intensity, sector affiliation, and national policies regarding the transposition of relevant EU legislation and policy incentives. Furthermore, our findings indicate that energy audits besides being the first step in realizing energy-efficiency opportunities, most likely lead to the adoption of their recommendations. This is consistent with the view that energy audit is a useful tool in overcoming the information barriers and facilitating investments in energy-efficiency measures (EEMs). In fact, their information is more crucial for small firms and for investments in support processes such as lighting, wall insulation etc. than in production processes such as replacement of machinery and equipment. We also find that the likelihood of investments in EEMs, especially after an energy audit, is higher when combined with external financing and for innovative firms.

Do European renewable energy mutual funds foster the transition to a low-carbon economy?

Economic growth and development around the world are leading to increasing worldwide demand for energy, whose production still mainly comes from fossil fuels generating large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming and climate change. To mitigate climate change, the European Union implemented an energy policy strategy that encourages firms to implement sustainable energy systems. This could generate investment opportunities in energy efficiency and renewable energy projects around the world for European mutual funds. Therefore, the main aim of this paper is to analyze the financial performance of energy and renewable energy mutual funds using conditional and unconditional models. To this end, we have a sample of 4496 mutual funds commercialized in Europe in the period 2007–2018. Our results indicate that renewable energy mutual funds perform similarly to the market using conditional models. However, they underperform their conventional peers using a specialized market benchmark, reaching similar performance to black energy funds. While the total expense ratio negatively affects renewable energy financial performance, other fund characteristics, such as size or Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) certification, do not affect it.

Evaluasi Tingkat Efisiensi Penggunaan Energi Kajian Ex Post Facto Penerapan Standar Green Building Gedung A ITSB

In Indonesia, until 2016, there were only 11 building units that were successfully certified by green building by the Green Building Council Indonesia (GBCI). The eleven buildings are classified as new building and claimed to be 43% efficient. The issue of energy efficiency in buildings is increasingly becoming a real action. As the first campus in Indonesia to be certified green building with the title of gold, Building A Bandung Institute of Technology and Science (ITSB), located in Cikarang, is expected to be an environmentally friendly pilot building and also a building capable of achieving energy efficiency targets. The building, which began construction in 2009 and completed in 2011, is one of the new building categories that is very well used as an evaluation object. Since its operation in 2012, the ITSB building has never been the object of study regarding the level of efficiency in energy use. The research carried out using the energy audit method for the ITSB building shows that there are levels of energy efficiency, especially electricity use, in the period of 2013 to 2017. From this period data, studies of building performance can be carried out with energy efficiency opportunities in the future. future.

Assessing the influence of Information and Communication Technologies on energy productivity

Abstract The digitalization current is among one of the most relevant factors that currently drive transformation in the economy, with different degrees of impact across the main segments of the economy. As the topic of sustainability is now on the agenda of the biggest economic players, digitalization and the ability to leverage Information and Communication Technology opportunities have been recognized as drivers for innovation and change and a means to reach the sustainability goals. Reaching energy efficiency has been among the main objectives of both the public and the private sectors, leading to an increased interest in recognizing and capitalizing on energy efficiency opportunities. This in turn has an impact on the overall energy productivity, defined as the economic output per unit of energy. While this indicator has relevance at both micro and macro level, it is important to identify which makes some countries perform better than others. In the current economic context, studying how the performance of countries in the digital era correlates with the energy productivity can reveal further information on how it can be improved. The Networked Readiness Index is an indicator which assesses how well a country can capitalize on digital technologies and whether their usage of Information and Communication Technology has a relevant socio-economic impact. This paper analyzes which components that are assessed in a country’s Networked Readiness Index might influence energy productivity. Based on a panel data analysis performed on European countries, the study identifies that the individual usage of Information and Communication Technologies, the business and innovation environment and the usage of ICT by the business segment could have an impact on the energy productivity of a country.

Evaluating energy efficiency potential in low-income households: A flexible and granular approach

This study presents a new approach to evaluating energy efficiency potential that provides a more accurate, granular, and flexible estimate of the cost-effective energy efficiency potential in households of various income ranges.Results from this work estimate that in U.S. single-family households with income less than 200% of the federal poverty level, energy efficiency packages tailored to maximize net present value could result in an estimated $13 billion per year in energy cost savings, or $670 per year for an average household, corresponding to about 1 EJ (0.9 quads) of annual primary energy savings. These types of metrics can be estimated for other geographies (regions, states, and counties) and for other ranges of household income.These results can be used by policymakers and program designers to improve the cost-effectiveness of income-qualified programs and to improve the equity of non-income-qualified programs. The results can also be used to understand how energy efficiency opportunities differ between urban and rural areas, as well as how energy efficiency can spur economic development in areas that have had high poverty rates for decades.

A review of Energy Efficiency Measures Within Electric Motors Systems

Electric motor systems (EMS) play the lion’s share in industrial power consumption. Many opportunities for energy efficiency - most of which apparently cost-effective - can be found, but often decision-makers do not take them as the detail for a specific decision can be too high. In many cases, information regarding the characteristics of such energy efficiency measures (EEMs) is quite vague. For this reason, in the present study we offer a thorough overview of EEMs for EMS, basing on an extensive review of scientific and industrial literature, aimed at offering specific detail over single EEMs and thus support to industrial decision-makers. EEMs are presented according to four main groups, as follows: hardware, motor system drives, management of motors in the plant, and power quality. The new categorization could be helpful to support research for the development of a novel framework to represent the main factors the affect the adoption of EMS for EMS.

A study of citywide urban residential energy information system for the building energy efficiency management: a cluster model of seven typical cities in China

The lack of empirical data demonstrating the relationship between influencing factors and building energy performance is one of the primary barriers in energy efficiency management. A citywide residential energy information database and the data-based analytical methodology help increase the knowledge about the local real estate situation, explore energy efficiency opportunities and measures, financial investment, and market trend in the local building stocks, and make the reasonable policies as well. Few databases were established in USA and Europe only covering the building information and energy use, while there are lack of an indices system and database of building energy efficiency information in China. Therefore, in this study, a definition of urban residential energy information system is suggested, covering the parameters of building characteristics, household characteristics, possession and operation of domestic appliances, indoor thermal environment, climate condition, energy market, economic level, municipal infrastructure, and energy use consequence. Consequently, a database is developed to collect the raw data in seven typical cities in China. A classification model is established by Quantitative Theory III to classify and characterize the urban residential energy use systems into three different city groups, and suggestions are made to guide the energy efficiency work for different city groups. The case study is a good example to demonstrate the methodology and the analysis provided a helpful reference for the citywide building energy efficiency management.

Enabling Energy-Efficient Physical Computing through Analog Abstraction and IP Reuse

This paper shows the first step in analog (and mixed signal) abstraction utilized in large-scale Field Programmable Analog Arrays (FPAA), encoded in the open-source SciLab/Xcos based toolset. Having any opportunity of a wide-scale utilization of ultra-low power technology both requires programmability/reconfigurability as well as abstractable tools. Abstraction is essential both make systems rapidly, as well as reduce the barrier for a number of users to use ultra-low power physical computing techniques. Analog devices, circuits, and systems are abstractable and retain their energy efficient opportunities compared with custom digital hardware. We will present the analog (and mixed signal) abstraction developed for the open-source toolkit used for the SoC FPAAs. Abstraction of Blocks in the FPAA block library makes the SoC FPAA ecosystem accessible to system-level designers while still enabling circuit designers the freedom to build at a low level. Multiple working test cases of various levels of complexity illustrate the analog abstraction capability. The FPAA block library provides a starting point for discussing the fundamental block concepts of analog computational approaches.

Evaluation of energy saving potentials, costs and uncertainties in the chemical industry in Germany

In 2014, 19.3% of Germany’s industrial final energy consumption could be allocated to the chemical industry. Energy efficiency measures with focus on the chemical industry could thus contribute to reaching the German goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve this goal, energy planners and industries alike require an overview of the existing energy efficiency measures, their technical potential as well as the costs for realizing this potential. Energy efficiency opportunities are commonly presented in marginal cost curves, which rank these measures according to specific implementation costs. Existing analyses, however, do not take uncertainties in costs and potentials sufficiently into account. The aim of this paper is to create a marginal cost curve of energy efficiency measures for the chemical industry in Germany, while quantifying the uncertainties of the results and identifying the most influential input parameters. The identification of energy efficiency measures and the quantification of the associated technical potentials and costs were identified based on literature data and own assessments. Based on these findings a cost curve was created for the current technical potential. This potential was found to be 24.4 PJ per year, of which 23 PJ had negative lifetime costs. To investigate the uncertainties of these results, Monte Carlo simulations were performed to quantify the standard deviations of the implementation potential and costs. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis, based on Morris Screening and linear regression, was conducted in order to identify the most influential model input parameters. With the applied approach, it was shown that uncertainties have a non-negligible impact on the final energy saving potential and costs, as well as the shape of marginal cost curves. The standard deviation of the energy saving potential was found to be 3.1 PJ. Furthermore, it is possible to systematically prioritise efforts in refining data.

Opportunities for behavioral energy efficiency and flexible demand in data-limited low-carbon resource constrained environments

Sensor networks, information and communication technologies, and advances in behavioral science can allow for the design and implementation of inclusive information and automation systems for ongoing low-carbon transitions. Here, we present results of the first randomized pilot providing tandem behavioral energy efficiency and flexible demand services through the use of distributed sensor networks in Latin America (Managua, Nicaragua). We show that the houses and micro-enterprises randomly assigned to the intervention reduced their energy consumption by nine percent relative to the control group, and participated at length in peak-shaving flexible demand events (≥80% of events). Identified social co-benefits included increased energy literacy, financial management and user empowerment, and find that improved access to energy information was more important than cash when incentivizing project participation with a high user willingness to pay. Several challenges may hinder the success of smart systems in resource constrained environments, including temporal and financial scarcity at the household level, lack of institutional support, and a panoply of top-down misaligned incentives. We document the multiple barriers to scale flexible demand and energy efficiency strategies, including bottom-up (e.g., appliance financing) and top-down (e.g., decoupling) challenges and discuss ways to overcome them. As more low, low-middle income countries transition away from fossil fuels, the use of sensor networks and information and communication technologies for building smart and inclusive smart systems will become increasingly necessary and attractive.

Spatial distribution of building energy use in the United States through satellite imagery of the earth at night

Despite the importance of geospatial analysis of energy use in buildings, the data available for such exercises is limited. A potential solution is to use geospatial information, such as that obtained from satellites, to disaggregate building energy use data to a more useful scale. Many researchers have used satellite imagery to estimate the extent of human activities, including building energy use and population distribution. Much of the reported work has been carried out in rapidly developing countries such as India and China where urban development is dynamic and not always easy to measure. In countries with less rapid urbanization, such as the United States, there is still value in using satellite imagery to estimate building energy use for the purposes of identifying energy efficiency opportunities and planning electricity transmission. This study evaluates nighttime light imagery obtained from the VIIRS instrument aboard the SUOMI NPP satellite as a predictor of building energy use intensity within states, counties, and cities in the United States. It is found that nighttime lights can explain upwards of 90% of the variability in energy consumption in the United States, depending on conditions and geospatial scale. The results of this research are used to generate electricity and fuel consumption maps of the United States with a resolution of less than 200 square meters. The methodologies undertaken in this study can be replicated globally to create more opportunities for geospatial energy analysis without the hurdles often associated with disaggregated building energy use data collection.

MEMCOP: memory-aware co-operative power management governor for mobile games

Modern mobile heterogeneous platforms have GPUs integrated with multicore processors to enable execution of high-end graphics-intensive games. However, these gaming applications consume significant power due to heavy utilization of CPU---GPU resources, which drains battery resources that are critical for mobile devices. While dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) techniques have been exploited previously for dynamic power management, contemporary techniques do not fully exploit the memory access footprint for graphics-intensive gaming applications, missing opportunities for energy efficiency. In this paper, we present MEMCOP, a memory-aware cooperative CPU---GPU DVFS governor that considers both the memory access footprint as well as the CPU/GPU frequency to improve energy efficiency of high-end mobile game workloads. Our experimental results on real games and synthetic game workloads show that our MEMCOP game governor achieves on average 18 and 9% improvement of energy efficiency with minor degradation of performance compared to default governors and state-of-the-art game governors.

The impact of the Tokyo Metropolitan Emissions Trading Scheme on reducing greenhouse gas emissions: findings from a facility-based study

ABSTRACTThis paper provides a detailed analysis of the Tokyo Metropolitan Emissions Trading Scheme (Tokyo ETS), Japan’s first emissions trading scheme with mandatory cap initiated by the government of Tokyo. Unlike trading schemes in other countries, the Tokyo ETS covers indirect emissions from the commercial sector. It is well known that a variety of market barriers impede full realization of energy efficiency opportunities, especially in the commercial sector. Experiences with the Tokyo ETS should therefore provide important lessons for the design of climate change mitigation policies, especially when targeting the commercial sector. The emissions from covered entities have been drastically reduced from those at the scheme’s outset, with an average 14% reduction as of the end of the first commitment period of five years (2010–2014) compared with 2009 levels. This paper shows that the Tokyo ETS alone did not cause these reductions; there were other drivers. Among them, the energy savings triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 were crucial. The contribution of credit trading, in contrast, was limited since most of the covered entities reduced emissions by themselves. Through an investigation of official reports, an assessment of the emissions data from the covered entities compared to those of uncovered entities and in-depth interviews with firms covered by the scheme, this paper confirms that the main drivers of emissions reductions by covered entities were separate from the ETS. In fact, the advisory aspect of the scheme seems to be much more important in encouraging energy-saving actions.Key policy insightsMost of the observed emission reductions were not caused by the Tokyo ETS alone.An advisory instrument was crucial to the effectiveness of the Tokyo ETS.The experience of the Tokyo ETS suggests that making full use of the advantages of emissions trading is difficult in the case of the commercial sector.Price signals have not provided a stimulus to climate change mitigation actions, which implies that establishing a cap to yield effective carbon prices poses a challenge.

Survey of Photonic and Plasmonic Interconnect Technologies for Intra-Datacenter and High-Performance Computing Communications

Large scale data centers (DC) and high performance computing (HPC) systems require more and more computing power at higher energy efficiency. They are already consuming megawatts of power, and a linear extrapolation of trends reveals that they may eventually lead to unrealistic power consumption scenarios in order to satisfy future requirements (e.g., Exascale computing). Conventional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-based electronic interconnects are not expected to keep up with the envisioned future board-to-board and chip-to-chip (within multi-chip-modules) interconnect requirements because of bandwidth-density and power-consumption limitations. However, low-power and high-speed optics-based interconnects are emerging as alternatives for DC and HPC communications; they offer unique opportunities for continued energy-efficiency and bandwidth-density improvements, although cost is a challenge at the shortest length scales. Plasmonics-based interconnects on the other hand, due to their extremely small size, offer another interesting solution for further scaling operational speed and energy efficiency. At the device-level, CMOS compatibility is also an important issue, since ultimately photonics or plasmonics will have to be co-integrated with electronics. In this paper, we survey the available literature and compare the aforementioned interconnect technologies, with respect to their suitability for high-speed and energy-efficient on-chip and off-chip communications. This paper refers to relatively short links with potential applications in the following interconnect distance hierarchy: local group of racks, board to board, module to module, chip to chip, and on chip connections. We compare different interconnect device modules, including low-energy output devices (such as lasers, modulators, and LEDs), photodetectors, passive devices (i.e., waveguides and couplers) and electrical circuitry (such as laserdiode drivers, modulator drivers, transimpedance, and limiting amplifiers). We show that photonic technologies have the potential to meet the requirements for selected HPC and DC applications in a shorter term. We also present that plasmonic interconnect modules could offer ultra-compact active areas, leading to high integration bandwidth densities, and low device capacitances allowing for ultra-high bandwidth operation that would satisfy the application requirements further into the future.