Overcoming Resource Nexus Conflicts With a Normative-Institutional Approach: A Case Study of Brazil

Water-energy nexus research highlights the need for co-management across water and energy sectors, whereby joint planning and solutions under better integrated governance of resources could make action more efficient and cost-effective to advance the SDGs. A gap remains in the literature with regards to the normative dimension of the resource nexus. At the background or resource nexus conflicts there are norms, which need to be considered and applied in the resolution of disputes. Brazil has been chosen as case study because of rising conflicts around its high dependency on water and hydropower generation to keep affordable tariffs, while securing multiple water uses. Hydrological factors (e.g., prolonged droughts) and non-hydrological factors (e.g., chronic delays in delivery of new plants and transmission lines) have impacted on water availability, which led to constraints for hydropower generation, with cascading economic, social and environmental impacts. Electricity prices have risen, while water quantity and quality have decreased, affecting multiple users and ecological integrity of rivers. All of which impact negatively on livelihoods and water services and sanitation, aggravated by the fact that electricity represents one of the fastest growing costs for Water services, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) suppliers. The novel combination of research methods based on metrics, historical-institutional analysis, questionnaire, and in-depth interviews served as instruments for the assessment of the water-electricity nexus issues and development of a new legal approach to manage conflicts arising in Brazil. Most of the existing work has favored integration of water and electricity sectors based on quantitative approach to address the interlinkages between them and tackle trade-offs. However, from a legal perspective, very little is known about how these sectors could be better integrated in practice. This study proposes a normative-institutional approach that offers a flexible, integrated, and adequate legal treatment to overcome the conflicts between water and electricity in the context of their asymmetrical governance, policies, regulation, planning and environmental injustices. Split in substantive, institutional, and procedural dimensions this approach is necessary to enhance participatory and equitable resource governance based on the laws of balancing legal principles, rational, inclusive, and transparent procedures. It was concluded that for water-electricity nexus thinking to be connected to the idea of integration it will be necessary to consider justice by taking a normative-institutional approach that can support advances to the SDGs in more holistic and fair ways

Forecasting Solar Home System Customers’ Electricity Usage with a 3D Convolutional Neural Network to Improve Energy Access

Off-grid technologies, such as solar home systems (SHS), offer the opportunity to alleviate global energy poverty, providing a cost-effective alternative to an electricity grid connection. However, there is a paucity of high-quality SHS electricity usage data and thus a limited understanding of consumers’ past and future usage patterns. This study addresses this gap by providing a rare large-scale analysis of real-time energy consumption data for SHS customers (n = 63,299) in Rwanda. Our results show that 70% of SHS users’ electricity usage decreased a year after their SHS was installed. This paper is novel in its application of a three-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture for electricity load forecasting using time series data. It also marks the first time a CNN was used to predict SHS customers’ electricity consumption. The model forecasts individual households’ usage 24 h and seven days ahead, as well as an average week across the next three months. The last scenario derived the best performance with a mean squared error of 0.369. SHS companies could use these predictions to offer a tailored service to customers, including providing feedback information on their likely future usage and expenditure. The CNN could also aid load balancing for SHS based microgrids

Advancing the Implementation of SDGs in Brazil by Integrating Water-Energy Nexus and Legal Principles for Better Governance

The close relationship between water, energy and sustainable development has been on the international political radar for some time. The multiple targets contained in the newly developed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) often crosscut and refer to more than one sustainable goal, suggesting the need to consider the potential for synergies and analyse the nature and extent of trade-offs. SDGs subscribe Brazil to new action targets that explicitly crosscut and refer to multiple goals and resources (e.g., water, energy). Current work on indicators concluded Brazil should consider recognising and forging connections between goals but lacked to consider any synergies between water and energy (SDG6, SDG7). However, a challenge is that energy and water in Brazil are dependent and serve as input of each other but follow two different management approaches: electricity is centrally governed by the federal government (taking a top-down approach), while the water sector is polycentric (following a bottom-up approach). Such institutional and administrative differences create the potential for tensions in drawing these sectors together according to the principle of integration, in order to create an integrated and holistic approach to policy making, decision making and functional operation of the sectors. This potential for disconnection also leads to serious instances of environmental injustices. This study contributes to existing studies with a normative framework (sustainable development) from which to derive further sense of the relationship between water and energy; and provides the legal tools that informs the values (legal principles), which will support the development of ethical nexus regimes, so that the negotiation of outcomes between more coherent water and energy policies also promote fairness within their regimes

Integration of water and energy planning to promote sustainability

This paper examines the inter-linkages between the water and energy sectors and their planning processes, by describing a comprehensive analytical tool developed to evaluate water energy nexus operational cost trends and planning to assist decision makers in exploring and evaluating alternative courses of action. Brazil has been chosen as a case study, because its electricity production is highly dependent on water to keep affordable tariffs, which in turn also serves as input to other important sectors, such as water services and sanitation, and raises disputes especially in basins marked by water scarcity, such as the São Francisco basin. In light of hydrological factors (e.g., droughts) and non-hydrological factors (e.g., chronic delays in delivery of new plants) there has been water availability constraints for electricity generation and energy prices have risen, while water quantity and quality have decreased for multiple users. Both of which impact negatively on water services and sanitation providers, because electricity figures as their fastest growing costs in times when they need more energy to source water from longer distances, or deeper levels because of water quantity and quality issues. Energy and water are characterized as common pool resources with planning processes along silos in Brazil that do not serve well the purpose of sustainable development. Better integrated water-energy plans at basin level is the alternative proposed under this paper to advance sustainability and mitigate the risks related to water scarcity that have resulted in negative impacts on both electricity and water sectors

Evaluating the accuracy of CFSR reanalysis hourly wind speed forecasts for the UK, using in situ measurements and geographical information

Climate data can be used in simulations to estimate the output of wind turbines in locations where meteorological observations are not available. We perform the most comprehensive evaluation of the NCEP CFSR reanalysis model hourly wind speed hindcasts to date, and the first for the UK, by correlating the data against 264 onshore and 12 offshore synoptic weather stations, over a period of 30 years. The correlation of CFSR data to in situ measurements is similar to alternative approaches used in other studies both onshore and offshore. We investigate the impact of the topography, land use and mean wind speed on the onshore locations for the first time. The analysis of these spatial factors shows that CFSR represents the variety of terrain over UK well, and that the worst correlated sites are those at the highest elevations

Excitonic Effects on Optical Absorption Spectra of Doped Graphene

We have performed first-principles calculations to study optical absorption spectra of doped graphene with many-electron effects included. Both self-energy corrections and electron-hole interactions are reduced due to the enhanced screening in doped graphene. However, self-energy corrections and excitonic effects nearly cancel each other, making the prominent optical absorption peak fixed around 4.5 eV under different doping conditions. On the other hand, an unexpected increase of the optical absorbance is observed within the infrared and visible-light frequency regime (1 ~ 3 eV). Our analysis shows that a combining effect from the band filling and electron-hole interactions results in such an enhanced excitonic effect on the optical absorption. These unique variations of the optical absorption of doped graphene are of importance to understand relevant experiments and design optoelectronic applications.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; Nano Lett., Article ASAP (2011

The cryogenic stopping cell of the IGISOL facility at ELI-NP

An IGISOL beamline that produces neutron-rich nuclei via photofission induced by a high-brilliance gamma beam is being developed at the Extreme Light Infrastructure - Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) facility. The core device will be a cryogenic stopping cell with an actinide target system in its center. We report on some of the latest simulation results for an optimal design of this gas cell

Intersubband decay of 1-D exciton resonances in carbon nanotubes

We have studied intersubband decay of E22 excitons in semiconducting carbon nanotubes experimentally and theoretically. Photoluminescence excitation line widths of semiconducting nanotubes with chiral indicess (n, m) can be mapped onto a connectivity grid with curves of constant (n-m) and (2n+m). Moreover, the global behavior of E22 linewidths is best characterized by a strong increase with energy irrespective of their (n-m) mod(3)= \pm 1 family affiliation. Solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equations shows that the E22 linewidths are dominated by phonon assisted coupling to higher momentum states of the E11 and E12 exciton bands. The calculations also suggest that the branching ratio for decay into exciton bands vs free carrier bands, respectively is about 10:1.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Common carp (Cyprinus carpio L.) alters its feeding niche in response to changing food resources: direct observations in simulated ponds

We used customized fish tanks as model fish ponds to observe grazing, swimming, and conspecific social behavior of common carp (Cyprinus carpio) under variable food-resource conditions to assess alterations in feeding niche. Different food and feeding situations were created by using only pond water or pond water plus pond bottom sediment or pond water plus pond bottom sediment and artificial feeding. All tanks were fertilized twice, prior to stocking and 2 weeks later after starting the experiment to stimulate natural food production. Common carp preferred artificial feed over benthic macroinvertebrates, followed by zooplankton. Common carp did not prefer any group of phytoplankton in any treatment. Common carp was mainly benthic in habitat choice, feeding on benthic macroinvertebrates when only plankton and benthic macroinvertebrates were available in the system. In the absence of benthic macroinvertebrates, their feeding niche shifted from near the bottom of the tanks to the water column where they spent 85% of the total time and fed principally on zooplankton. Common carp readily switched to artificial feed when available, which led to better growth. Common carp preferred to graze individually. Behavioral observations of common carp in tanks yielded new information that assists our understanding of their ecological niche. This knowledge could be potentially used to further the development of common carp aquaculture

Field-effect transistors assembled from functionalized carbon nanotubes

We have fabricated field effect transistors from carbon nanotubes using a novel selective placement scheme. We use carbon nanotubes that are covalently bound to molecules containing hydroxamic acid functionality. The functionalized nanotubes bind strongly to basic metal oxide surfaces, but not to silicon dioxide. Upon annealing, the functionalization is removed, restoring the electronic properties of the nanotubes. The devices we have fabricated show excellent electrical characteristics.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure