Ocean Energy in Belgium - 2019

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RISK ASSESSMENT OF MALICIOUS ATTACKS AGAINST POWER SYSTEMS

The new scenarios of malicious attack prompt for their deeper consideration and mainly when critical systems are at stake. In this framework, infrastructural systems, including power systems, represent a possible target due to the huge impact they can have on society. Malicious attacks are different in their nature from other more traditional cause of threats to power system, since they embed a strategic interaction between the attacker and the defender (characteristics that cannot be found in natural events or systemic failures). This difference has not been systematically analyzed by the existent literature. In this respect, new approaches and tools are needed. This paper presents a mixed-strategy game-theory model able to capture the strategic interactions between malicious agents that may be willing to attack power systems and the system operators, with its related bodies, that are in charge of defending them. At the game equilibrium, the different strategies of the two players, in terms of attacking/protecting the critical elements of the systems, can be obtained. The information about the attack probability to various elements can be used to assess the risk associated with each of them, and the efficiency of defense resource allocation is evidenced in terms of the corresponding risk. Reference defense plans related to the online defense action and the defense action with a time delay can be obtained according to their respective various time constraints. Moreover, risk sensitivity to the defense/attack-resource variation is also analyzed. The model is applied to a standard IEEE RTS-96 test system for illustrative purpose and, on the basis of that system, some peculiar aspects of the malicious attacks are pointed ou

Sustainability assessment of Thailand's electricity planning: Using section 1 of the 2009 hydropower sustainability assessment protocol

We conducted a rapid assessment of the sustainability performance of the Thai power development plan and a number of related planning processes, focusing on the Thai plan’s implications for development of hydropower in the Mekong region. We used the August 2009 draft Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP), which is a qualitative multi-criteria audit tool designed to be used by a wide range of interested parties. We applied the HSAP from a public interest perspective: We assumed that aquatic ecosystems in the Mekong region are critically important for less privileged people, and that Thailand’s electricity planners can and should consider the distributional and ecological consequences of planning choices on a Mekong regional scale. Two sets of readers may find the report of interest. Those who seek insight into sustainability challenges posed, when a middle-income Asian country turns to hydropower imports from poorer neighbors, will find a contextualized and empirically rich discussion. Readers interested in the practice of integrated sustainability assessment will find a detailed application of the August 2009 draft Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP) – a tool which has been somewhat controversial to date (Bosshard 2010; Foran 2010; Locher, et al. 2010). Does rapid assessment improve our understanding of sustainability challenges? We found a number of significant gaps or weaknesses in the Thai power development plan (PDP). Combined with political instability faced by the Thai government in 2009-10, these challenges resulted in generally low levels of sustainability performance of the 2010 PDP. The Thai Ministry of Energy however appears genuinely willing to cooperate with civil society organizations in ongoing work that may improve the next PDP. The 2009 HSAP was not an easy tool to use. Many indicators required careful re-interpretation. The assessment was time consuming: partly because multiple processes deserved to be assessed in order to derive an adequate picture of multi-level planning processes. Sustainable development needs early-stage planning tools, which allow options to be rethought. Despite its practical difficulties, the 2009 HSAP compresses a range of important issues into one emerging framework. Although the Thai PDP is ultimately a bureaucratic planning process, its sustainability can – and must – be influenced by civil society and regional-level actors. Though careful interpretation of the HSAP is required, this finding is adequately captured by the use of the Protocol

Carbon neutrality concept and progress

Sufficient scientific evidence now shows that Earth’s temperature is warmer than before. The temperature of the planet (global warming) is becoming s source of climate change that is estimated to have negative consequences for all living beings (Sovacool and Griffiths, 2020). Climate change, if it keeps moving in the direction in which it is heading now, will have severe consequences for anything and everything that exists on this planet. This is not a man-made story; rather, the argument is established upon the data collected by international organizations such as United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA, among others. Data on global warming have been gathered across multiple time periods and analyzed for a very long time to arrive at the conclusion of severe and unpleasant consequences for everyone and everything on the planet. Excessive carbon dioxide emis- sions is the main contributing factor of global warming. However, it is not only carbon dioxide that causes global warming—many other gases are harmful to the climate, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, as well as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. This is not an exhaustive list, but for now, think of greenhouse gases as a catch-all term for the harmful substances we are pumping into the atmo- sphere. Since carbon dioxide has the most significant share among harmful gases, academic and nonacademic researchers study carbon dioxide more than other gases