Mitigation Goals Research Articles

Quantifying the climate change mitigation potential of China’s furniture sector: Wood substitution benefits on emission reduction

Abstract Wood and wood-based products have positive effects on climate change mitigation. These products can substitute for energy-intensive products made of conventional materials. The main objective of this study was to quantify substitution benefits of wood furniture for China via national-scale mitigation analyses. We selected a basket of representative furniture and estimated the emission reduction for two functionally equivalent products, which differentiate in wood intensity. The emissions avoided in each type of product were weighted by its share of the furniture market to ensure that the basket can represent the current situation. Then, avoided emissions were estimated for wood commodities contained in the products basket. Results demonstrated that wood materials exerted low environmental impacts. From the less to the more wood intensity products with the equivalent function, the proportion of energy-intensive materials decreased 24% while the proportion of their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreased 34%. The overall displacement factor for the wood material was 2.67 kg CO2eq/kg or 1.46 tC/tC. The findings highlight the importance of material selection in mitigating climate change in the furniture sector. It is urgent to use of the existing timber resources efficiently and pursue alternative schemes for emission reduction to achieve the goal of GHG mitigation.

Enrichment and Characterisation of a Mixed-Source Ethanologenic Community Degrading the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste Under Minimal Environmental Control.

The utilisation of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste as feedstock for bioethanol production could reduce the need for disposal of the ever-increasing amounts of municipal solid waste, especially in developing countries, and fits with the integrated goals of climate change mitigation and transport energy security. Mixed culture fermentation represents a suitable approach to handle the complexity and variability of such waste, avoiding expensive and vulnerable closed-control operational conditions. It is widely accepted that the control of pH in these systems can direct the fermentation process toward a desired fermentation product, however, little empirical evidence has been provided in respect of lignocellulosic waste substrates and different environmental inocula sources. We evaluated ethanol production from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste using five different inocula sources where lignocellulose degradation putatively occurs, namely, compost, woodland soil, rumen, cow faeces and anaerobic granular sludge, when incubated in batch microcosms at either initially neutral or acidic pH and under initially aerobic or anaerobic conditions. Although ethanol was produced by all the inocula tested, their performance was different in response to the imposed experimental conditions. Rumen and anaerobic granular sludge produced significantly the highest ethanol concentrations (∼30 mM) under initially neutral and acidic pH, respectively. A mixed-source community formed by mixing rumen and sludge (R + S) was then tested over a range of initial pH. In contrast to the differences observed for the individual inocula, the maximal ethanol production of the mixed community was not significantly different at initial pH of 5.5 and 7. Consistent with this broader functionality, the microbial community analyses confirmed the R + S community enriched comprised bacterial taxa representative of both original inocula. It was demonstrated that the interaction of initial pH and inocula source dictated ethanologenic activity from the organic fraction of municipal solid waste. Furthermore, the ethanologenic mixed-source community enriched, was comprised of taxa belonging to the two original inocula sources (rumen and sludge) and had a broader functionality. This information is relevant when diverse inocula sources are combined for mix culture fermentation studies as it experimentally demonstrates the benefits of diversity and function assembled from different inocula.

Policy goals, partisanship and paradigmatic change in energy policy – analyzing parliamentary discourse in Germany over 30 years

ABSTRACTThe successful implementation of the Paris Agreement requires substantial energy policy change on the national level. In national energy policy-making, climate change mitigation goals have to be balanced with arguments on other national energy policy goals, namely limiting cost and increasing energy security. Thus far, very little is known about the relative importance of these goals and how they are related to political partisanship. In order to address this gap, we focus on parliamentary discourse around low-carbon energy futures in Germany over the past three decades and analyze the relative importance of, and partisanship around, energy policy goals. We find that the political discourse revolves around four, rather than three, goals as conventionally assumed; improving the competitiveness of the national energy technology industry is not only an additional energy policy goal, it is also highly important in the political discourse. In general, the relative importance of these goals is rather stable over time and partisanship around them is limited. Yet, a sub-analysis of the discourse on renewable energy technologies reveals a high level of partisanship, albeit decreasing over time. Particularly, the energy industry goal’s importance increases while its partisanship vanishes. We discuss how these findings can inform future energy policy research and provide a potential inroad for more ambitious national energy policies.Key policy insightsIn addition to the three classic goals of energy policy (limiting cost, securing access and reducing the environmental burden) we identify a fourth policy goal: strengthening the national energy technology industryConformity between the three classical energy and the industrial policy goals is a key driver explaining policy changeFor renewable energy technologies, partisanship around this fourth goal is lower than around other goals and decreases over time as innovation allows these technologies to increasingly correspond to policy-makers’ high-level goalsExtant research underestimates the importance of industry policy goals, but overestimates environmental co-benefits of low-carbon energy optionsParadigmatic policy change in Germany did not depend on top-down shifts in high-level policy goals but was driven by lower-level technology-specific goals

Impacts of previous maintenance of river embankments on the grassland communities by changing soil properties

River embankments can be the potential semi-natural habitats for grassland species, although the recent disturbances for maintenance would alter overall vegetation of river embankments. For evaluating possibility of grassland species conservation in vegetation of river embankments, we aimed to clarify how does the previous maintenances (i.e. disturbance history) influence current species composition and diversity in grassland vegetation by changing soil properties. We conducted vegetation and soil surveys at 64 plots along the slope of embankments of the Tone River, Chiba and Ibaraki Prefectures, Japan, separated into 36 and 28 plots at disturbed and undisturbed embankments, respectively. We tested environmental factors (i.e., maintenance history, location of the river embankment, slope aspect, and interaction effects of the maintenance history and location) affecting species richness and soil properties of river embankments by using generalized linear models (GLMs) and linear models, respectively. We also evaluated species recovery through time by testing the significance of relationships between elapsed time (since last maintenance) and the richness values of all and grassland species. We found that disturbance history influenced current grassland species richness and soil properties (e.g. bio-available soil P and percentage of fine sand) and grassland species have recovered gradually in the disturbed river embankments located on the outer periphery of the reservoir. For achieving synergy between flood mitigation and grassland conservation goals, grassland vegetation maintained on disturbed river embankments located on the outer periphery of the reservoir can be targets for restoration of grassland species.

Wind turbines cause functional habitat loss for migratory soaring birds.

Wind energy production has expanded to meet climate change mitigation goals, but negative impacts of wind turbines have been reported on wildlife. Soaring birds are among the most affected groups with alarming fatality rates by collision with wind turbines and an escalating occupation of their migratory corridors. These birds have been described as changing their flight trajectories to avoid wind turbines, but this behaviour may lead to functional habitat loss, as suitable soaring areas in the proximity of wind turbines will likely be underused. We modelled the displacement effect of wind turbines on black kites (Milvus migrans) tracked by GPS. We also evaluated the impact of this effect at the scale of the landscape by estimating how much suitable soaring area was lost to wind turbines. We used state-of-the-art tracking devices to monitor the movements of 130 black kites in an area populated by wind turbines, at the migratory bottleneck of the Strait of Gibraltar. Landscape use by birds was mapped from GPS data using dynamic Brownian bridge movement models, and generalized additive mixed modelling was used to estimate the effect of wind turbine proximity on bird use while accounting for orographic and thermal uplift availability. We found that areas up to approximately 674m away from the turbines were less used than expected given their uplift potential. Within that distance threshold, bird use decreased with the proximity to wind turbines. We estimated that the footprint of wind turbines affected 3%-14% of the areas suitable for soaring in our study area. We present evidence that the impacts of wind energy industry on soaring birds are greater than previously acknowledged. In addition to the commonly reported fatalities, the avoidance of turbines by soaring birds causes habitat losses in their movement corridors. Authorities should recognize this further impact of wind energy production and establish new regulations that protect soaring habitat. We also showed that soaring habitat for birds can be modelled at a fine scale using publicly available data. Such an approach can be used to plan low-impact placement of turbines in new wind energy developments.

Green Infrastructure Financing as an Imperative to Achieve Green Goals

Green infrastructure (GI) has increasingly gained popularity for achieving adaptation and mitigation goals associated with climate change and extreme weather events. To continue implementing GI, financial tools are needed for upfront project capital or development costs and later for maintenance. This study’s purpose is to evaluate financing tools used in a selected GI dataset and to assess how those tools are linked to various GI technologies and other GI project characteristics like cost and size. The dataset includes over 400 GI U.S. projects, comprising a convenience sample, from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). GI project characteristics were organized to answer a number of research questions using descriptive statistics. Results indicated that the number of projects and overall cost shares were mostly located in a few states. Grants were the most common financial tool with about two-thirds of the projects reporting information on financial tools receiving grant funding. Most projects reported financing from only one tool with a maximum of three tools. Projects primarily included multiple GI technologies averaging three and a maximum of nine. The most common GI technologies were bioswales, retention, rain gardens, and porous pavements. These findings are useful for decision-makers evaluating funding support for GI.

South Africa After Paris—Fracking Its Way to the NDCs?

South Africa faces the triple challenge of (a) fueling its economic development by meeting the rapidly growing energy demand; (b) increasing the reliability of its power system; and (c) letting domestic greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2020 and 2025 in line with its pledge to the UNFCCC under the Paris agreement. Recently discovered domestic shale gas reserves are currently under evaluation as a potential new energy source, to provide clean, reliable and cheap electricity while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. But, the impact of shale gas on greenhouse gas emissions is far from settled. In order to evaluate if shale gas can play a viable role in solving South Africa’s energy dilemma, we apply a country-level version of the integrated assessment model MESSAGE to analyze and quantify the interdependence between shale gas extraction and climate change mitigation e_ort regarding the South African energy pathways and its domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Our results illustrate, that low cost shale gas can lower the overall energy system costs compared to the no-shale-gas counterfactual. At the same time, a system with abundant low cost natural gas from shale sources requires a stronger carbon price signal compared to the no-shale-gas scenarios in order to achieve the same desired mitigation goals. Therefore, reaching the mitigation goals might be more economically achievable utilizing low cost shale gas in combination with a more stringent climate policy measure compared to a no-shale-gas scenario.

Carbon storage and net primary productivity in Canadian boreal mixedwood stands

Canadian boreal mixedwood forests are extensive, with large potential for carbon sequestration and storage; thus, knowledge of their carbon stocks at different stand ages is needed to adapt forest management practices to help meet climate-change mitigation goals. Carbon stocks were quantified at three Ontario boreal mixedwood sites. A harvested stand, a juvenile stand replanted with spruce seedlings and a mature stand had total carbon stocks (± SE) of 133 ± 13 at age 2, 130 ± 13 at age 25, and 207 ± 15 Mg C ha−1 at age 81 years. At the clear-cut site, stocks were reduced by about 40% or 90 Mg C ha−1 at harvest. Vegetation held 27, 34 and 62% of stocks, while detritus held 34, 29 and 13% of stocks at age 2, 25 and 81, respectively. Mineral soil carbon stocks averaged 51 Mg C ha−1, and held 38, 37 and 25% of stocks. Aboveground net primary productivity (± SE) in the harvested and juvenile stand was 2.1 ± 0.2 and 3.7 ± 0.3 Mg C ha−1 per annum (p.a.), compared to 2.6 ± 2.5 Mg C ha−1 p.a. in the mature stand. The mature canopies studied had typical boreal mixedwood composition and mean carbon densities of 208 Mg C ha−1, which is above average for managed Canadian boreal forest ecosystems. A comparison of published results from Canadian boreal forest ecosystems showed that carbon stocks in mixedwood stands are typically higher than coniferous stands at all ages, which was also true for stocks in vegetation and detritus. Also, aboveground net primary productivity was typically found to be higher in mixedwood than in coniferous boreal forest stands over a range of ages. Measurements from this study, together with those published from the other boreal forest stands demonstrate the potential for enhanced carbon sequestration through modified forest management practices to take advantage of Canadian boreal mixedwood stand characteristics.

National REDD+ outcompetes gold and logging: The potential of cleaning profit chains

Abstract Prominent recent evaluations of global research on REDD+ progress (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) conclude that ‘progress has been slower than expected’, ‘deforestation and degradation are deeply-rooted in powerful business-as-usual interests’ and that ‘[f]or the most part, new coalitions calling for change in forest governance have failed to overcome business-as-usual deforestation.’ Others have earlier pointed out that REDD+ will incentivize land grabbing (potentially endangering customary use rights of forest-dependent citizens), and will remain financially uncompetitive against current commercial forest uses. Combining nationwide data over a decade from Guyana’s United Nations-approved Forest Reference Emission Level (FREL) submission and national documents, we found that REDD+ implemented at national level would annually add almost a quarter to the country’s budget, and should not incentivize land grabbing as it places little direct value on forest, but financial penalties (lost income) on forest damage. We show quantitatively that national REDD+ in Guyana is competitive on a hectare basis when viewed from the resource owner’s perspective, even against high value commodities such as gold and timber (the country’s main emission drivers), and at a preliminary US$5 carbon price. Hidden by the latter appears a very lopsided distribution of overall net revenue between the state and private sector commodity chains (∼1:99 and ∼1:1200). We show government or electorate pressure towards more equitable distribution, or ‘cleaning profit chains’, would both be justified and highly worthwhile, without job loss. Investing part of this homegrown finance in further securing lawful and rational management of exhaustible forest-based resources has several additional economic, social and environmental benefits, including for forest-dependent citizens. Society awareness of current revenue ratios, REDD+ income losses, and potential returns of interventions may add helpful (i.e. economic, domestic) motivation for forest governance change in sovereign countries. Weak law enforcement, prevailing across the tropics, enhances lopsided sharing, and linked political leverage could undermine plans that would interfere with private income streams, e.g. rural social development, tenure, forest/biodiversity conservation. Interventions may therefore additionally enhance these sectors’ performances. Assessing and cleaning private profit chains may more generally have potential for REDD+ and global climate change mitigation goals, along with its many associated social and environmental co-benefits.

Subnational politics of the urban age: evidence from Brazil on integrating global climate goals in the municipal agenda

As nations agreed on a bottom-up approach to establish the Paris Agreement in 2015, Non-state Actors (NSAs) became increasingly acknowledged as key players in the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). In a mostly urbanised world, local governments have a major part to play in designing and implementing climate policies that will help overcome carbon lock-in and enable the transition to a sustainable low-carbon future. Transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have a well-documented history of contributing to multilevel climate governance and supporting experiments in local climate action in many countries. In Brazil, urban climate experimentation has increased since 2005 and accelerated after 2015. Based on empirical evidence from a national survey and two Brazilian metropolises, the study demonstrates that TMNs have been drivers of the municipal climate agenda in Brazil, but there is no evidence so far that urban governance experiments have resulted in significant greenhouse gas emission reductions. Furthermore, the collective impact of cities' experimentation on the national climate agenda is yet to be verified. In light of multilevel climate governance and the urban experimentation conceptual framework, we contend that while there is no documented evidence that local climate action has affected Brazil's ability to meet its mitigation goals, cities' paradiplomacy and policy experiments have strengthened a multilevel approach to climate governance and contributed to positive change towards a sustainable transition. Furthermore, a closer look at policies across scales and their interactions will help our understanding of how to improve t'he institutional framework for climate governance in Brazil and secure GHG emission reductions, thus contributing to global goals beyond 2020.

Potential synergies of drop‐in biofuel production with further co‐processing at oil refineries

AbstractDrop‐in biofuels have been defined as functionally equivalent to petroleum‐based transportation fuels and are fully compatible with the existing petroleum infrastructure. They will be essential in sectors such as aviation if we are to achieve emission reduction and climate mitigation goals. Currently, ‘conventional’ drop‐in biofuels, which are primarily based on upgrading of lipids / oleochemicals, are the only significant source of commercial volumes of drop‐in biofuels. However, the necessary increased, future volumes will likely come from ‘advanced’ drop‐in biofuels based on biomass feedstocks such as forest and agriculture residues. Biocrudes / bio‐oils produced from lignocellulosic feedstocks using thermochemical technologies such as gasification, pyrolysis, and hydrothermal liquefaction need to be further upgraded to drop‐in biofuels. However, advanced drop‐in biofuels have been slow to reach commercial maturity due to significant technical challenges, high capital costs, and the challenge of generally lower oil prices. It is likely that the co‐processing of drop‐in biofuels with conventional petroleum refining could considerably reduce capital costs. Initially, co‐processing is likely to be established through the upgrading of conventional / oleochemical feedstocks (lipids). Lipids are readily available in large volumes (global production in 2017 was ~185 million metric tonnes) and can be more easily integrated into oil‐refinery processes. In contrast, lignocellulose‐derived biocrudes / bio‐oils are not yet available in significant volumes and are more complex to co‐process in a refinery. The likely strategies for co‐processing of oleochemicals (lipids) and bio‐oil and biocrude feedstocks based on different insertion points within the refinery infrastructure are discussed. © 2019 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Prospective Influences of the Substitution of Electric Vehicles for Liquid Vehicles: TIMES Modeling of the Global Energy System

The substitution of electric vehicles for liquid vehicles is an inevitable trend for low-carbon transport. Considering the porposed policies and technologies development, liquid vehicles will likely start to be prohibited for sale from 2030 to 2045 in different countries. This research designed scenarios to model the prospective influences of the liquid vehicles elimination using Global TIMES model. Results show that energy consumption and direct carbon emissions of global transport sector in prohibition scenarios are expected to decrease by 54.1% and 84.8% in 2050 compared to SSP2 and electrification rate of global transport sector may reach 60.5%. Cumulative direct carbon emissions of global transport sector can accomplish the RCP2.6 mitigation target, which is allocated to transport sector by the model, if the median prohibition time will be prior to 2035. Nevertheless, the RCP2.6 mitigation goal is not expected to be achieved considering the indirect emissions from the increasing electricity consumption in global transport. Therefore, the substitution of electric vehicles for liquid vehicles should be accompanied with the decarbonization of global power sector.

A unified approach for protecting listed species and ecosystem services in isolated wetlands using community-level protection goals

The protection of listed species through the Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) process is encumbered by the number and diversity of species that need protection and the limited data available to inform assessments. Ecological communities within isolated ecosystems often contain a number of biologically diverse endemic, endangered, and threatened species, as well as providing numerous ecosystem services (ES). We propose an approach that develops community-level protection goals using isolated wetlands that includes both listed species and Service Providing Units (SPUs) that drive ES for ecological risk assessments (ERAs). Community-level protection goals are achieved by developing a protection community and weighing lines of evidence to determine a set of focal species within that community upon which to base the assessment. Lines of evidence include chemical mechanism of action, likely routes of exposure, and taxa susceptibility, as well as relationships among species, and other ecological factors. We demonstrate the process using case studies of chlorpyrifos in California vernal pools and coal ash effluent in Carolina bays. In the California vernal pool case study, listed species were the primary SPUs for the ES provided by the critical habitat. The weight of evidence demonstrated the honey bee as the focal species for the terrestrial environment and the vernal pool fairy shrimp as the focal species for the aquatic environment. The protection community within the Carolina bay case study was more taxonomically diverse than vernal pools for both listed species and SPUs, with amphibians identified as the focal species for which to target mitigation goals and hazard levels. The approach presented here will reduce the time and resource investment required for assessment of risk to listed species and adds an ES perspective to demonstrate value of assessments beyond listed species concerns.

Business-as-usual redefined: Energy systems under climate-damaged economies warrant review of nationally determined contributions

This paper presents a new approach to incorporate climate damages in the BAU emissions baselines. The shared socio-economic pathways framework is used to inform country-level changes in the mean surface temperature for the climate projections associated with each scenario. The temperature changes are used to calculate the economic damages using empirical estimates of climate effects on GDP growth. Finally, an energy system model is used under the original socio-economic assumptions and the climate-damaged assumptions, illustrating the indirect effect of climate change in a country-level energy system.Mexico was chosen to exemplify this method. The results show a reduction of energy access and a slow down of technological transition in the energy sector under climate-damaged projections.It is concluded that greenhouse gas mitigation goals should be re-calibrated under cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the damages associated with future climates consistent with the baseline. Thus, the nationally determined contributions that state the emission goals of many countries could be closer to limit the temperature to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Environmental policy development at the global level: Issues and prospects

Due to the increased ecological crisis, there has been a corresponding spread of awareness and concern for environmental protection and conservation all over the world. There has been a growing recognition that many environmental problems, in particular, those of a trans-boundary nature, cannot be successfully tackled solely at the national level. Nation-states can no longer act alone to solve many of the environmental problems that they face. States, along with other international actors, have responded by creating international ‘regimes’ in an attempt to tackle problems ranging from ozone depletion and climate change to biodiversity loss and toxic waste exports (Connelly, J., Smith, G., Benson, D., & Saunders, C., 2012, p.250). The idea of global environmental governance took place to address the environmental challenges at the global platform. The idea of environmental governance is to govern the environment through a range of nation-states and non-state actors such as national governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other international organizations such as UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). Environmental governance is the answer to calls for new forms of environmental challenges and complexities. It is perceived to be an effective form of multilateral management and essential to the global community in meeting goals of mitigation and the possible reversal of the human impacts on the global environment. The present article discusses the global response to environmental issues. DOI: 10.5958/2347-6869.2019.00002.5

Using conflicts to uncover injustices in energy transitions: The case of social impacts of energy efficiency policies in the housing sector in Germany

Energy efficiency in the housing stock has been praised as a win-win strategy reducing end energy use for heating and alleviating energy poverty. However, policies to foster energy efficiency improvements have led to rising protests and conflicts because investments made into retrofitting became a means of speculation and displacement of low-income residents. Conflict theory emphasises the role of conflicts as drivers of social change; they open a window into how and by whom the legitimacy of existing rules and government is challenged. The paper uses social conflict theory to interpret the conflicting interests and issues at stake here. It concludes that what seemed to be a conflict between social and ecological goals, turns out to be a distributional conflict around affordable housing and against unjust distributions of cost burdens of energy transitions. The manifest conflicts between tenants and the housing industries were caused – or enabled – through the specific policy context. The state had imposed new norms for energy standards of buildings and left their economic consequences to be solved in the conflicts between housing companies and tenants. The legitimacy of these policies was challenged, especially the actual ecological effects – and thus the intention to reach the climate mitigation goals of the German government – are disputed. The conflicts described here stimulated the formation of interest groups, contributed to social movements and raised awareness to the social impacts of energy efficiency policies. Thus, the paper shows how much a clearer engagement of sustainability transition literature with conflicts and conflict theory is needed to better address justice issues in energy transitions.

Cybercrime and Risks for Cyber Physical Systems

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the integration of computation and physical systems that make a complete system such as the network, software, embedded systems, and physical components. Major industries such as industrial plants, transport, national grid, and communication systems depend heavily on CPS for financial and economic growth. However, these components may have inherent threats and vulnerabilities on them that may run the risk of being attacked, manipulated or exploited by cyber attackers and commit cybercrimes. Cybercriminals in their quest to bring down these systems may cause disruption of services either for fame, data theft, revenge, political motive, economic war, cyber terrorism, and cyberwar. Therefore, identifying the risks has become imperative in mitigating the cybercrimes. This paper seeks to identify cybercrimes and risks that are associated with a smart grid business application system to determine the motives and intents of the cybercriminal. The paper identified four goals to mitigate the risks: as business value, organizational requirements, threat agent and impact vectors. We used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the importance of the goals that contribute to identifying cybercrime and risks in CPS. For the results, a case study is used to identify the threat and vulnerable spots and the prioritized goals are then used to assess the risks using a semi-quantitative approach to determine the net threat level. The results indicate that using the AHP approach to identify cybercrime and risk on CPS provides specific risk mitigation goals.

Smart Home Energy Management System Design: A Realistic Autonomous V2H / H2V Hybrid Energy Storage System

The hybrid fuel cell electric vehicle powered by household power during peak use is another opportunity to reduce emissions and save money. For this reason, Vehicle-to-Home (V2H) and Home-to-Vehicle (H2V) systems were proposed as a new method of exchanging smart energy and a new method of exchanging smart energy. The main goal of this paper is to develop a smart home energy management based on IoT, generate more energy efficiency and share production between home and vehicle. In fact, the Hybrid Fuel cell electric vehicle will be used simultaneously to power household appliances during peak demand for electricity to solve energy consumption. The household's energy is derived from an accurate Autonomous hybrid power system. Several technologies such as Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, solar panel, Supercapacitor (SC) device and water electrolyzer are incorporated into the proposed system. Two-way electrical energy from the PEMFC-Hybrid Electric Vehicle and household power will be exchanged by discharging vehicle energy storage to balance energy demand and supply. To this end, a smart energy management unit (EMU) will be developed and discussed in order to meet the estimated fuel consumption mitigation goals during peak periods when demand is highest, coordinating between household power and vehicle energy storage. The Matlab / Simulink software based on an experimental database extracted from household power to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy and its effects on V2H / H2V operations will simulate the presented design for one day. The Matlab / Simulink software based on an experimental database extracted from household power to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy and its effects on V2H / H2V operations will simulate the presented design for one day.

Participative dendromass bioenergy modeling in regional dialogs with the open-source BEAST system

Regional participative decision-making processes are becoming increasingly important in the context of climate change mitigation goals and renewable energy production. Dendromass bioenergy plays an important role in climate protection planning at the local and regional levels.
 The 'Bio-Energy Allocation and Scenario Tool' (BEAST) is a decision support system designed to assist in stakeholder dialogues, with the goal of developing scenarios of regional wood production through scenario quantification and visualization. While it incorporates wood from forests and outside of forests as bioenergy sources, its main application area is the spatial selection of preference sites for Short Rotation Coppices on arable land, based on the integration of ecological and economic assessments in a multi-criteria analysis with preference selection using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).
 This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the purposes of the system, its simulation and software design, and also announces the system's availability as open-source software.

De-risking policies as a substantial determinant of climate change mitigation costs in developing countries: Case study of the Middle East and North African region

Ambitious goals for climate change mitigation and energy security policies are driving deployment of renewable energy sources globally. However, the deployment of renewable energies at scale requires not only public but also private capital, such as foreign direct investment (FDI). Many countries with favourable conditions for renewables, such as the countries of the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, are not attracting sufficient FDI. Risk perceptions of FDI stakeholders are one of the reasons. This paper discusses the de-risking approach as a possible tool to address subjective risk perceptions and assesses with a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model macroeconomic feedback-effects of employing a de-risking strategy for FDI into a particular kind of renewable electricity (RES-E) technology, concentrated solar power, in the MENA region. Our results show that the application of a de-risking approach reduces the costs for deployment of CSP, and therefore, also volumes of subsidies that would be needed to make CSP cost competitive with fossil fuel based electricity generation. This, in turn, leads to positive GDP and welfare effects in the MENA region. Our results allow us developing of recommendations for energy policy the implementation of the de-risking approach as a potential consensual option with high political feasibility to reduce climate change mitigation costs.