Sustaining Resources for Tomorrow

At the dawn of the twenty-second century, the grandchildren of those born at the start of the twenty-first century will be having their own children and the global population could have reached 11.2 billion. At such levels, the world’s energy demands could be 124% higher than in 2017. How can this increased demand be met? It is highly unlikely that traditional fossil fuels will be able to meet these future wants and needs because of their continuing depletion rates. Moreover, the accumulative amounts of carbon dioxide produced, since the start of the British Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, by the burning of such fuels can be correlated with increasing rises in global surface temperatures. It is these rises which have led to the growing public concerns about the detrimental impact of anthropogenic activity on climate change. Consequently, although fossil fuels provide almost 90% of today’s energy demand, additional forms of energy will be required for the future. But what will these be? A study by the Stanford University group, based on the energy scenarios of 139 countries, predicted that all their energy needs could be met by renewable forms by 2050. Whatever the accuracy of such predictions, the underlying assumption that all countries will buy into the wholly renewable scenario is highly optimistic. The World Energy Council, in their ‘hard-rock’ energy transition scenario for 2060, has suggested that the availability of local resources and the concomitant political pressures will prevent global collaboration on energy use and climate change issues. Thus, while the eventual transition away from the dominance of fossil fuel energy is inevitable, exactly how and when this will happen to remain matters of conjecture. The current development emphasis on alternative energy sources that are considered to be sustainable and renewable will likely continue. However, will such sources ever be able to meet 100% of the future global energy needs in the absence of carbon-based fuels, let alone the increasing demand for energy? In this chapter, the candidate energy sources, which are considered by some, if not all, to be renewable, are discussed against a background of the growing acceptance of climate change, government and regional energy policies, and associated incentives in an attempt to address the question, ‘Renewables Alone,’ at least for the remainder of this century.

This study aims to explore the existence of environmental Kuznets curves (EKCs) in urban water and energy use patterns at regional scale based on a wide data set of 336 municipalities in the Guadalquivir River Basin. A systematic analysis of the relationships between urban water-energy use patterns and indicators of economic development (i.e. income and employment) is carried out. Additionally, this study takes into account other determinants that might also have an impact on the urban use of these resources, such as population density, age and educational level. Results contribute to a better understanding of the socio-economic factors driving urban demands for energy and water, thus also offering policy guidelines to guarantee the sustainable management of both resources.

Phosphorus is essential for all living beings and it also serves as an important macro-nutrient for biological tissues. It is a vital element, needed to sustain food production and is widely used in the agricultural sector. However, phosphorus as a resource is limited, with estimates suggesting that the world supply could be depleted in a few decades. As a result, it will elevate the issues related to food production, and therefore, consideration of its recovery has become a focus of interest to researchers. Wastewaters from municipalities and some industries can contain high concentration of phosphorus which, if not treated, can cause eutrophication to receiving waters. In recent years, treatment and reuse of phosphate mining wastewater have been gaining considerable attention. The mining of phosphorus from raw phosphate rock (PR) can lead to air pollution, eutrophication in receiving waters, land degradation through phosphogypsum (emitted by stacks near the mining sites), and soil contamination. Recently, various treatment methods have been suggested to treat phosphorus-rich wastewaters. These include chemical precipitation, biological, combined chemical and biological treatment, and several wastewater and sludge-based methods. A brief description of these has been presented in this chapter.

In arid regions, limitation of protected cultivations in greenhouses is mainly due to the overheating of the inside air during hot and long summer seasons. The greenhouse accumulates around 10 MJ m^-2 of heat energy per day; this requires an expensive, energy consuming cooling system to remove the heat and to achieve favorable conditions for crop growth. Cooling greenhouses are facing several challenges in arid regions due to the excessive solar irradiance, extremely high ambient air temperature, as well as water scarcity and salinity. A new concept (net-house) as a naturally-ventilated alternative agricultural structure, covered with low-cost, plastic nets was introduced. The proposed net-house does not require cooling and ventilation systems, and provides a uniform distribution of solar radiation and a suitable environment for crop growth and the production costs will be significantly decreased.

There is not a single solution for sustainable food for the future. Multiple sources, with differing views on the effect of diets on our health, the global population, society, and the future of the environment, are able to compromise on an ‘imperfect’ solution. Unsurprisingly, the better, more environmental-friendly, less energy- and water-intensive foods are generally plant-based. Because strict plant-based diets cut out all animal products, the happy medium is the Mediterranean diet. The Mediterranean diet is mainly plant-based, with some fish, eggs, and even less meat and dairy recommended. This bodes well for different cultures, health, and people universally and projects well for the planet’s future. The authors hope that this chapter will provide factual insight from multiple sources for readers to make informed decisions of what to consume on a daily basis.

The structures renovation’s economical impact generally relies on the devices and energy-saving methods’ application. By wall insulation, great economical impact is accomplished. In this regard, it is even greater than changing the windows. The wall insulation option resolutions of structures vary in the materials utilized, labor force spending, and other ways. The renovation’s cost based on the resolutions applied. The criteria describing the existing wall isolation options may have diverse values. Additionally, they may differ in diverse instructions, i.e., a greater value of some criteria represents a preferable situation, while for others they signify a worse state. By means of multicriteria assessment methodologies, a reconciliation variable is needed, which can be obtained in this environment. To decrease the impact of diverse methodologies on computational conclusions, it can be proposed to evaluate the phenomenon (or object) thought by a few diverse methodologies, with the detection of the average forecast value. Thus, the several special multicriteria assessment methodologies’ disadvantages could be replaced by the others’ benefits. In recent years, thermal insulation materials’ many styles are present in the market. The calculations made in this study by AHP multicriteria assessment methodology allowed us to determine the most effective insulation material option out of ten used alternatives commercial insulation materials. In the second stage, the most assessable natural alternative insulation material among ten different uncommercial-natural insulation materials is analyzed with the same methodology.

Despite the large amount of existing research that has focused on the analysis of the uncertainties of environmental impacts of buildings, the improvement of its reliability still remains a problem. Current studies highlighted the influence of uncertainties in the minimization of effectiveness of life cycle assessment (LCA) method for decision making. With an aim of improving the reliability for strengthening the comparison of building projects, in this study, we propose a novel way of interpretation of environmental impacts. Coupling uncertainty and sensitivity analysis to the model for the evaluation of environmental impacts of buildings was possible to improve the robustness of project comparisons. Moreover, it is found that the contribution of uncertainties of inputs is not the same for different values of a building’s lifetime.

Within the context of this book, entitled “Sustaining Resources for Tomorrow”, it can quickly come to mind how and why we got here now: why after millennia of human history it is so necessary to talk about “Green Energy and Technology”, within which this writing is framed. Actually, to raise these issues today would seem rhetorical, because at this point of the twenty-first century everyone knows how and why we have reached this point. Even in the most disadvantaged or remote places one can, in one way or another, get access to a television, a mobile phone, the Internet. The fact that we continue to feel the need and urgency to address these issues makes us realize how little resolved are still at the global level. Few are those who act 100% in consequence of such a situation. And we can find so many contradictions in our daily life…

Global conflicts in securing the energy resources and the climate change have propelled the investment in renewable energy (RE) research and deployment in the last two decades. This chapter statistically confirms the relationship between renewable research and energy security and benchmarks the efficiency of the R&D efforts in different RE technologies. Our findings reveal that the inexpensive and abundant natural gas in energy markets restrained the research on energy technologies particularly after 2010. This bears a risk for the diminished capacity of the countries in energy security, especially in bull energy markets. The results of the super-efficiency model of data envelopment analysis (DEA) reveal that the wind and biofuel technologies are the efficiency leaders in R&D, where each dollar spent on their research has a bigger impact on energy security than other RE types. The countries should continue investing on renewable research and develop collective innovation and commercialization strategies, especially in solar, geothermal, and ocean technologies in order to achieve sustainable energy efficiency levels for providing the energy security.

This chapter investigates the challenges that small wind market would face, in order to exploit its potential possibilities to keep growing, becoming a relevant asset for the energy production sector worldwide. Despite its name, small wind market is actually large and relies on several different possibilities for energy production through different types of devices (from the ‘classic’ horizontal-axis wind turbines and vertical-axis wind turbines to ‘retrofitting innovative designs’ such as the cross-axis wind turbines or building augmented wind turbines). The scope of application of this market is also wide, from small-scale ‘classic’ wind turbines in semi-urban areas to the installation of different designs in the domestic sector (building rooftops and surroundings) or integrated in the building design. The different possibilities for energy production of the small wind market and its scope of application are reviewed through this chapter, so as to gather enough information to assess the maturity of this technology and its match with the energy consumption needs. The objective is to test the possibilities of the small wind market in now and in near future. An open-source wind turbine calculation software, QBlade, was used to describe the relationship between the design of the airfoil and its performance, under the specific conditions that usually small wind market devices are exposed to.

The research and application of renewable energy sources and electromobility implies a subordinate but not negligible problem, the energy storage. The most important sources of clean energy, related to solar and wind power plants, are in fact intermittent and therefore require their management in energy collection, even more in the long term. Additionally, electromobility and several other applications may need huge peak power. All this kind of problems cannot be solved always by electrochemical batteries. An alternative to them is represented by supercapacitors (SCs), energy storage devices specialized in high power, exhibiting also a very long life cycle. In this chapter, we will illustrate the state of the art of their operation, typologies, applications and all that a wide-ranging interdisciplinary literature offers us about how this type of technology could be used more and more in the near future.

Global efforts are already focusing on future targets for even more increases in renewable energy sources contribution, greater efficiency improvements and further greenhouse gas emission reductions. With the fast-paced changing technologies in the context of sustainable development, new approaches and concepts are needed to cope with the variability and uncertainty affecting generation, transmission and load demand. The main challenge remains in developing technologies that can efficiently make use of the available renewable resources. Alternatives in the form of microgrids or virtual power plants along with electricity storage are potential candidates for enhancing flexibility. However, intelligence must be added at all levels in the grid and among all the equipment comprising each subsystem, in order to achieve two-way communications and bidirectional flow of power. Then, the concept of smart grid can be realized and, relying upon software systems, it can remotely and automatically dispatch and optimize generation or storage resources in a single, secure and Web-connected way. Deploying smart configurations and metering promises new possibilities for self-managed energy consumption, improved energy efficiency among final consumers and transition to more consumer-centric energy systems via demand response and demand-side management mechanisms.

The reduction of CO₂ emissions requires the combination of measures that prevent the emission of this compound in the electrical and industrial sector. Each region will have different characteristics that should be accentuated to apply the most viable technologies. In this case, a study is carried out in the North of Spain, where a potential CO₂ store is located and, in this work, the development of a cluster CCS is studied, which is defined as the region with minimum CO₂ emissions. In this case, the connection of different industrial nodes with the storage is studied, and a cluster CCS definition methodology is proposed. Those nodes that are economically and/or environmentally unviable in connection with the geological storage may apply other technologies for direct or indirect use of CO₂.