Electric vehicle energy integration scenarios: a feasibility analysis environment

The UK Government has set a goal that by 2040, every new car will be an ultra-low emission vehicle. This makes the exploitation of excess storage in electric vehicles to provide electricity support potentially beneficial. The technology required to utilise this opportunity is called ‘vehicle-to-grid’, primarily a vehicle connection post with a built-in bi-directional inverter, providing both vehicle charging and discharging functionality. Through utilisation of this equipment, local energy systems, such as building clusters, can utilise the excess energy stored within the vehicles parked on site. The aim of this research was to create a platform from which to evaluate the investment opportunity of vehicle-to-grid in a local services case study for future energy scenarios. As such, a feasibility analysis environment was developed that evaluates the economic benefit to both vehicle and building owners in installing vehicle-to-grid. The software has the capability to assess any case study with a collection of buildings, vehicles, photovoltaics or market demand. Energy scenarios have been developed within the software to run case studies for economic evaluation, with the scenarios ranging from building peak shaving, tariff demand reduction, photovoltaic demand shifting and energy market provision. By altering the number of vehicles being assessed, the software can also calculate infrastructure provision requirements and related costs. [Continues.

Multinational corporations in violent conflict: a case study of firestone in Liberia

The First Liberian Civil War began with an insurgency led by Charles Taylor on Christmas Eve in 1989. At the time, the company Firestone Liberia (one of many of the subsidiaries of the multinational, Bridgestone Corporation) had been operating the world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia’s Margibi County for over six decades. Over the course of three years, Firestone engaged with various actors in the Liberian conflict theatre in order to continue operating its rubber plantation. The most notable of these actors was the warlord, Charles Taylor, a relationship for which Firestone Liberia has received much criticism. This case study is situated within the broader debate on the role of multinational corporations in host countries that descend into conflict. The existing literature on the topic exposes a potentially ambivalent role for private actors as either catalysts for aggravating conflict dynamics or promoters of peace within conflict zones. This research contends that insufficient attention has been paid to understanding the minutiae of corporate behaviour in contemporary conflict and that more in-depth low-n case studies are required before prescribing a positive role for companies in conflict zones. The findings of this paper reveal the importance of accounting for variables, such as conflict characteristics and geo-economic and geopolitical conditions, and how these limit the agency of private actors in situations of violent conflict

Fair decarbonisation of housing in the UK: a sufficiency approach

This paper addresses a neglected aspect of the UK housing crisis: how to rapidly but fairly decarbonise the housing stock to meet tough net zero targets while meeting housing needs of the entire population. To do so the authors adopt a radical approach based on sufficiency. The sufficiency approach is based on determining both a housing floor – a decent minimum standard for all – and a housing ceiling - above which lies unsustainable excess. The authors define these thresholds in terms of bedrooms and floorspace and analyse the distribution of housing in England. They find that excess housing is widespread, concentrated in home ownership, particularly outright ownership, and characterised by above average emissions per square metre. They conclude that current policies based solely on energy efficiency and increasing housing supply cannot achieve agreed decarbonisation goals while securing decent accommodation for those who are housing deprived. To do this will require new policies that distinguish between sufficient and excess housing and more effective use of the housing stock to meet housing needs within planetary boundaries

Vehicle-to-grid feasibility: A techno-economic analysis of EV-based energy storage

© 2017 Elsevier LtdThe potential for electric vehicles to obtain income from energy supplied to a commercial building together with revenue accruing from specific ancillary service markets in the UK is evaluated in this work. A hybrid time-series/probabilistic simulation environment using real-world data is described, which is applied in the analysis of electricity trading with vehicle-to-grid to vehicles, buildings and markets. Key parameters are found to be the electric vehicle electricity sale price, battery degradation cost and infrastructure costs. Three vehicle-to-grid scenarios are evaluated using pool vehicle trip data, market pricing index data and half-hourly electricity demand for a commercial building. Results show that provision of energy to the wholesale electricity market with additional income from the capacity market results in the greatest projected return on investment, producing an individual vehicle net present value of ∼£8400. This is over 10 years for a vehicle supplying energy three times per week to the half-hour day-ahead market and includes the cost of installing the vehicle-to-grid infrastructure. The analysis also shows that net income generation is strongly dependent upon battery degradation costs associated with vehicle-to-grid cycling

Consistency of parental and self-reported adolescent wellbeing : evidence from developmental language disorder

Research on adolescent wellbeing in Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) has previously been examined through measures of parent (proxy) or self-reported wellbeing, but never has a study included both and enabled comparison between the two. The current study reports parent and self rated wellbeing of adolescents with DLD and Low Language (LL) ability, as well as their typically developing (TD) peers. It also examines consistency between raters and factors influencing correspondence. Adolescents aged 10–11 with DLD (n = 30), LL (n = 29) or TD (n = 48) were recruited from eight UK primary schools. A battery of standardized language, psychosocial and wellbeing assessments, including the KIDSCREEN-27 were administered. Adolescent ratings of wellbeing were similar across groups on three of the five wellbeing dimensions, but those with DLD had lower self-reported Autonomy and Parental Relations than their TD peers, and both the DLD and LL group had lower School Environment scores than their TD peers. By parental report, the DLD and LL group were considered to have lower wellbeing on all five wellbeing dimensions relative to their TD peers. Paired sample t-test analyses indicated a high level of variance between parent and adolescent reported wellbeing for multiple wellbeing domains, especially Psychological Wellbeing. Importantly, predictors of the level of agreement between parent and adolescent reported psychological wellbeing differed between groups: cognitive reappraisal and sociability predicted this level of agreement for adolescents with LL, while social competence predicted agreement in DLD and TD. This study emphasizes the necessity of allowing adolescents of all language abilities to report their own wellbeing, as their perspective does not align with that of their parents. It also highlights the importance of including the full spectrum of need when investigating the impact of language ability on consistency between proxy and self-reported wellbeing

State-of-the-Art Assessment of Smart Charging and Vehicle 2 Grid services

Electro-mobility – especially when coupled smartly with a decarbonised grid and also renewable distributed local energy generation, has an imperative role to play in reducing CO2 emissions and mitigating the effects of climate change. In parallel, the regulatory framework continues to set new and challenging targets for greenhouse gas emissions and urban air pollution. • EVs can help to achieve environmental targets because they are beneficial in terms of reduced GHG emissions although the magnitude of emission reduction really depends on the carbon intensity of the national energy mix, zero air pollution, reduced noise, higher energy efficiency and capable of integration with the electric grid, as discussed in Chapter 1. • Scenarios to limit global warming have been developed based on the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and these set the EV deployment targets or ambitions mentioned in Chapter 2. • Currently there is a considerable surge in electric cars purchasing with countries such as China, the USA, Norway, The Netherlands, France, the UK and Sweden leading the way with an EV market share over 1%. • To enable the achievement of these targets, charging infrastructures need to be deployed in parallel: there are four modes according to IEC 61851, as presented in Chapter 2.1.4. • The targets for SEEV4City project are as follow: o Increase energy autonomy in SEEV4-City sites by 25%, as compared to the baseline case. o Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 150 Tonnes annually and change to zero emission kilometres in the SEEV4-City Operational Pilots. o Avoid grid related investments (100 million Euros in 10 years) by introducing large scale adoption of smart charging and storage services and make existing electrical grids compatible with an increase in electro mobility and local renewable energy production. • The afore-mentioned objectives are achieved by applying Smart Charging (SC) and Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technologies within Operational Pilots at different levels: o Household. o Street. o Neighbourhood. o City. • SEEV4City aims to develop the concept of 'Vehicle4Energy Services' into a number of sustainable business models to integrate electric vehicles and renewable energy within a Sustainable Urban Mobility and Energy Plan (SUMEP), as introduced in Chapter 1. With this aim in mind, this project fills the gaps left by previous or currently running projects, as reviewed in Chapter 6. • The business models will be developed according to the boundaries of the six Operational Pilots, which involve a disparate number of stakeholders which will be considered within them. • Within every scale, the relevant project objectives need to be satisfied and a study is made on the Public, Social and Private Economics of Smart Charging and V2G. • In order to accomplish this work, a variety of aspects need to be investigated: o Chapter 3 provides details about revenue streams and costs for business models and Economics of Smart Charging and V2G. o Chapter 4 focuses on the definition of Energy Autonomy, the variables and the economy behind it; o Chapter 5 talks about the impacts of EV charging on the grid, how to mitigate them and offers solutions to defer grid investments; o Chapter 7 introduces a number of relevant business models and considers the Economics of Smart Charging and V2G; o Chapter 8 discusses policy frameworks, and gives insight into CO2 emissions and air pollution; o Chapter 9 defines the Data Collection approach that will be interfaced with the models; o Chapter 10 discusses the Energy model and the simulation platforms that may be used for project implementation

Herbivore absence can shift dry heath tundra from carbon source to sink during peak growing season

© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Min, E., Wilcots, M. E., Naeem, S., Gough, L., McLaren, J. R., Rowe, R. J., Rastetter, E. B., Boelman, N. T., & Griffin, K. L. Herbivore absence can shift dry heath tundra from carbon source to sink during peak growing season. Environmental Research Letters, 16(2), (2021): 024027, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd3d0.In arctic tundra, large and small mammalian herbivores have substantial impacts on the vegetation community and consequently can affect the magnitude of carbon cycling. However, herbivores are often absent from modern carbon cycle models, partly because relatively few field studies focus on herbivore impacts on carbon cycling. Our objectives were to quantify the impact of 21 years of large herbivore and large and small herbivore exclusion on carbon cycling during peak growing season in a dry heath tundra community. When herbivores were excluded, we observed a significantly greater leaf area index as well as greater vascular plant abundance. While we did not observe significant differences in deciduous dwarf shrub abundance across treatments, evergreen dwarf shrub abundance was greater where large and small herbivores were excluded. Both foliose and fruticose lichen abundance were higher in the large herbivore, but not the small and large herbivore exclosures. Net ecosystem exchange (NEE) likewise indicated the highest carbon uptake in the exclosure treatments and lowest uptake in the control (CT), suggesting that herbivory decreased the capacity of dry heath tundra to take up carbon. Moreover, our calculated NEE for average light and temperature conditions for July 2017, when our measurements were taken, indicated that the tundra was a carbon source in CT, but was a carbon sink in both exclosure treatments, indicating removal of grazing pressure can change the carbon balance of dry heath tundra. Collectively, these findings suggest that herbivore absence can lead to changes in plant community structure of dry heath tundra that in turn can increase its capacity to take up carbon.The authors would like to thank Jess Steketee, Austin Roy, Matthew Suchocki, Ruby An, Cody Lane and the Arctic LTER (NSF Grant No. 1637459) for maintaining the long-term herbivore exclosure experiment. This work was supported by funding from the NSF (Grant Nos. OPP-1603677 to J R M, OPP-1603760 to L G, OPP-1603654 to R J R, OPP-1603560 to E R, OPP-1603777 to N B and K L G). We also acknowledge financial support for Megan Wilcots from the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University

A systematic review of the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on root-lesion nematodes Pratylenchus spp.

Root-lesion nematodes (Pratylenchus spp.) and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) occupy the same ecological niche in the phytobiome of many agriculturally important crops. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can enhance the resistance or tolerance of a plant to Pratylenchus and previous studies have been undertaken to investigate the relationship between these organisms. A restructuring of the AMF phylum Glomeromycota has reallocated the species into genera according to molecular analysis. A systematic review of the literature was synthesized to assess the interaction between Pratylenchus spp. and AMF using the revised classification. Plants inoculated with AMF generally exhibited greater tolerance as demonstrated by increased biomass under Pratylenchus pressure. Species of AMF fromthe order Diversisporales tended to increase Pratylenchus population densities compared to those from the order Glomerales. Species from the genera Funneliformis and Glomus had a reductive effect on Pratylenchus population densities. The interaction between AMF and Pratylenchus spp. showed variation in responses as a result of cultivar, crop species, and AMF species. Putative mechanisms involved in these interactions are discussed

Report on the ISIKLE Project: Increasing and Evaluating Student Impact in Knowledge and Learning Exchange (ISIKLE)

This final report on the ISIKLE project which summarises the findings of the mixed-method evaluation of the work of ISIKLE over the two years from June 2020. The project was by funded by Research England and OfS to demonstrate and evaluate effective practices in student engagement in Knowledge Exchange activities to assess their economic and social benefits to individual students and to external partners and communities. The evaluation includes a Systematic Review of the literature on student knowledge exchange; narrative case studies of the innovations introduced on the ISIKLE sub-projects at UCL and University of Manchester; and both quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the impacts of the programmes on students and external partner