Delivery of contracted energy flexibility from communities

This paper contributes to existing research on energy flexibility by introducing centralised and decentralised model-predictive control (MPC) strategies designed to deliver demand reductions over specific time periods for demand response based on real-time demand projections. The MPC strategies were evaluated with co-simulations of an English community fitted with heat pumps over three afternoons in January, March and November with a demand response event. Effects of dynamic and static electricity pricing on delivery of DR were analysed. In line with previous findings factors like seasonality and pricing were found to influence the flexibility potential of the community. Operational differences found between the centralised and decentralised MPC set-ups highlight importance of the control set-up for scalability and delivery of flexibility

Value-transforming financial, carbon and biodiversity footprint accounting

Transformative changes in our production and consumption habits are needed to enable the sustainability transition towards carbon neutrality, no net loss of biodiversity, and planetary well-being. Organizations are the way we humans have organized our everyday life, and much of our negative environmental impacts, also called carbon and biodiversity footprints, are caused by organizations. Here we show how the financial accounts of any organization can be exploited to develop an integrated carbon and biodiversity footprint account. As a metric we utilize spatially explicit potential global loss of species which, we argue, can be understood as the biodiversity equivalent, the utility of which for biodiversity is similar to what carbon dioxide equivalent is for climate. We provide a global Biodiversity Footprint Database that organizations, experts and researchers can use to assess consumption-based biodiversity footprints. We also argue that the current integration of financial and environmental accounting is superficial, and provide a framework for a more robust financial value-transforming accounting model. To test the methodologies, we utilized a Finnish university as a living lab. Assigning an offsetting cost to the footprints significantly altered the financial value of the organization. We believe such value-transforming accounting is needed in order to draw the attention of senior executives and investors to the negative environmental impacts of their organizations

Review of techniques to enable community-scale demand response strategy design

Incorporating demand side flexibility can aid in integrating intermittent renewable energy generation and reducing the electricity grid’s operational costs. Buildings have the potential to provide demand response (DR) with minimal disruption to activities by leveraging the inherent energy storage in their heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Harnessing this flexibility whilst minimising energy consumption and maintaining thermal comfort requires control strategies capable of incorporating these objectives, making model-predictive control (MPC) a promising framework. To elucidate the control techniques available to harness the HVAC flexibility of collections of buildings to participate in electricity markets, this paper reviews the current state of literature describing MPC techniques for community-scale control. The reviewed studies were classified based the following characteristics: the general aim of the MPC approach, objective function, thermal response model, amount and type of buildings considered, DR type, control structure, solving tools and techniques, and the energy, cost savings or flexibility achieved. The review shows that MPC strategies can successfully provide many types of DR indicating the versatility of the control approach. Decentralised control approaches reduced the complexity of the large-scale control problem whilst providing more autonomy to individual users. However, compared to centralised approaches, decentralised control led to lower amounts of flexibility. Lastly, few studies validated the performance of their controller in either simulation or physical environments. Therefore, the review suggests further research is needed to study and validate the performance the of different MPC control structures considering various community types and concurrent participation in various DR schemes

Julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjälki

Hanke käynnistyi kesäkuussa 2023 Jyväskylän yliopiston Resurssiviisausyhteisön (JYU.Wisdom), Ympäristöministeriön, Hansel Oy:n ja Valtiokonttorin yhteistyönä. Tavoitteena hankkeessa oli tuottaa laajempi tietopohja julkisten hankintojen ekologisista vaikutuksista JYU.Wisdomissa kehitetyllä luontojalanjäljen laskentamenetelmällä. Luontojalanjälkeä mitataan osuutena kaikista maailman lajeista, joka todennäköisesti häviää maailmanlaajuisesti (potentially disappeared fraction of species globally) eli niin sanottuna luontoekvivalenttina (biodiversity equivalent, BDe). Julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjälki oli 26 171 nBDe vuonna 2021 ja 25 048 vuonna 2022. Suurin luontojalanjälki vuonna 2022 aiheutui rakentamis- ja kunnossapitopalveluista (20 %), rakennusten energian kulutuksesta (14 %), sosiaali- ja terveyspalveluista (10 %) sekä lääkkeistä ja hoitotarvikkeista (10 %). Hankintojen luontohaittaintensiteettiin (BDe/€) ja määrään (€) perustuvan analyysin mukaan merkittävin potentiaali luontojalanjäljen pienentämiseen on rakentamis- ja kunnossapitopalveluissa, lääkkeissä ja hoitotarvikkeissa, rakennusten energian kulutuksessa sekä ravitsemus- ja majoituspalveluissa. Raportti osoittaa, että hiili- ja luontojalanjälkiä pystytään tarkastelemaan rinnakkain. Systemaattisen seurannan avulla voidaan kehittää mitattavia tavoitteita jalanjälkien pienentämiseksi. Julkinen sektori voi merkittävänä toimijana näyttää suuntaa hankintojen luontojalanjäljen seurannassa ja pienentämisessä

Julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjälki

Julkisten hankintojen ekologiset tavoitteet -hanke käynnistyi kesäkuussa 2023 Jyväskylän yliopiston Resurssiviisausyhteisön (JYU.Wisdom), Ympäristöministeriön, Hansel Oy:n ja Valtiokonttorin yhteistyönä. Jyväskylän yliopiston tavoitteena hankkeessa oli tuottaa laajempi tietopohja julkisten hankintojen ekologisista vaikutuksista JYU.Wisdomissa kehitetyllä luontojalanjäljen laskentamenetelmällä. Luontojalanjälkeä mitataan osuutena kaikista maailman lajeista, joka todennäköisesti häviää maailmanlaajuisesti (potentially disappeared fraction of species globally) eli niin sanottuna luontoekvivalenttina (biodiversity equivalent, BDe). Julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjälki oli 33 039 nBDe vuonna 2021 ja 32 390 nBDe vuonna 2022. Suurin luontojalanjälki vuonna 2022 aiheutui sosiaali- ja terveyspalveluista (30 %), rakentamis- ja kunnossapitopalveluista (16 %), rakennusten energian kulutuksesta (11 %) sekä lääkkeistä ja hoitotarvikkeista (8 %). Hankintojen luontohaittaintensiteettiin (BDe/€) ja määrään (€) perustuvan analyysin mukaan merkittävin potentiaali luontojalanjäljen pienentämiseen on rakentamis- ja kunnossapitopalveluissa, lääkkeissä ja hoitotarvikkeissa, rakennusten energian kulutuksessa sekä ravitsemus- ja majoituspalveluissa. Mallinnuksen mukaan, julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjäljestä keskimäärin yli 90 % kohdistui maantieteellisesti Suomen rajojen ulkopuolelle. Suomen julkisten hankintojen luontojalanjäljen laskenta viitoittaa tietä suomalaisen yhteiskunnan kestävyysmurrokselle. Raportti osoittaa, että hiili- ja luontojalanjälkiä pystytään tarkastelemaan rinnakkain. Systemaattisen seurannan avulla voidaan kehittää mitattavia tavoitteita jalanjälkien pienentämiseksi. Julkinen sektori voi merkittävänä toimijana näyttää suuntaa sekä Suomessa että kansainvälisesti hankintojen luontojalanjäljen seurannassa ja pienentämisessä.Tämän version korvaa uusi, muutettu aineisto osoitteessa https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-361-371-3

Cyclists in shared bus lanes: could there be unrecognised impacts on bus journey times?

This paper contributes to debates around improving the modelling of cycles, through an exploratory case study of bus–cycle interactions in London. This case study examines undocumented delays to buses caused by high volumes of cyclists in bus lanes. It has generally been assumed that cyclists do not noticeably delay buses in shared lanes. However, in many contexts where cyclists routinely share bus lanes, cyclist numbers have historically been low. In some such places, bus lanes are now seeing very high volumes of cyclists, far above those previously studied. This may have implications for bus – and cycle – journey times, but traditionally traffic modelling has not represented the effects of such interactions well. With some manipulation of parameters taken from models of other cities, the model described here demonstrates that cycles can cause significant delays to buses in shared lanes, at high cycling volumes. These delays are likely to become substantially larger if London's cycling demographic becomes more diverse, because cyclist speeds will decline. Hence bus journey time benefits may derive from separating cycles from buses, where cycle flows are high. The project also suggests that microsimulation modelling software, as typically used, remains problematic for representing cyclists

Network Structure and City Size

Network structure varies across cities. This variation may yield important knowledge about how the internal structure of the city affects its performance. This paper systematically compares a set of surface transportation network structure variables (connectivity, hierarchy, circuity, treeness, entropy, accessibility) across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. A set of scaling parameters are discovered to show how network size and structure vary with city size. These results suggest that larger cities are physically more inter-connected. Hypotheses are presented as to why this might obtain. This paper then consistently measures and ranks access to jobs across 50 US metropolitan areas. It uses that accessibility measure, along with network structure variables and city size to help explain journey-to-work time and auto mode share in those cities. A 1 percent increase in accessibility reduces average metropolitan commute times by about 90 seconds each way. A 1 percent increase in network connectivity reduces commute time by 0.1 percent. A 1 percent increase in accessibility results in a 0.0575 percent drop in auto mode share, while a 1 percent increase in treeness reduces auto mode share by 0.061 percent. Use of accessibility and network structure measures is important for planning and evaluating the performance of network investments and land use changes

Public transport equity in Shenyang: Using structural equation modelling

In China, with the rapid development of urbanisation, the contradiction between supply and demand has become increasingly severe, particularly in large and medium-sized cities. Improving public transport equity can help to reduce the social exclusion of lower-income and socially vulnerable groups in relation to the urban transport system, and guarantee that public transport systems are given priority in terms of development. Using the concept of transport-related social equity, this study aims to explore the effects of public transport equity in relation to the quality of public transport, public participation, and public transport-related policy using Shenyang as a case study. Data are analysed using Structural Equation Model (SEM). Our findings show that the three latent variables of accessibility, affordability, and social impacts can be seen as representing the main characteristics of public transport equity; while improvements in public transport quality, public participation, and public transport-related polices play a significant role in reducing public transport inequity. Moreover, the findings indicate that public participation has direct, significant, positive influences on public transport quality and public transport-related policies. In terms of policy implications, we suggest that policies designed to improve public transport service quality, extend public transport fare concessions, and promote public participation in the public transport policy decision-making process should be given priority in the next round of urban comprehensive planning in order to reduce public transport-related social inequity in Shenyang and China more generally

A planetary well-being accounting system for organizations

Transformative changes in the operations of humankind are needed to support the transition towards planetary well-being. We humans organize our everyday lives through organizations. We argue that to understand the role of organizations and to facilitate the transition towards planetary well-being, we need a value-transforming integration of financial and environmental accounting and reporting. We find such integration critical to ensuring that the senior executives of organizations pay attention, and to ensuring that environmental impacts begin to influence the management decisions of the organizations. In this chapter we discuss how and why environmental accounting can and should be integrated with financial accounting, which is the dominant information system supporting decision-making in organizations. We explain how environmental impacts can be identified and quantified by utilizing financial accounts and environmentally extended input-output databases. We present an integrated financial-environmental impact statement as an alternative to the current separated reports of financial and environmental accounts. Finally, we conclude that the integration of financial and environmental accounting should be mandatory for all organizations with financial disclosure obligations and that the environmental impacts should be made visible by introducing mandatory biodiversity offsetting schemes, new environmental protection taxes, or some other instruments that have the potential to transform the value of financial accounts.peerReviewe