Solar hydrogen system for cooking applications: Experimental and numerical study

This paper describes the development of a semi-empirical numerical model for a solar hydrogen system consisting of a proton exchange membrane electrolyser (PEM) powered by photovoltaic panels to produce hydrogen as fuel for cooking applications, focussing on Jamaica as a suitable case-study. The model was developed in TRNSYS and includes a novel numerical component based on FORTRAN to model the operation of the PEM electrolyser. The numerical component was developed based on operational data from a purpose constructed small-scale experimental rig. The numerical model was calibrated using data from the experimental rig powered by operational data from a photovoltaic panel system in the UK and predicted photovoltaic panel power data from Jamaica. For the test conditions, experiments indicated an electrolysis maximum efficiency of 63.6%. The calibrated model was used to develop a case study analysis for a small community in Jamaica with a daily cooking demand of 39.6kWh or 1.7kg of H2 gas. Simulations indicate that the H2 production plan is sufficient for the cooking needs of the case-study.This project is partly funded by ACP Caribbean & Pacific Research Programme for Sustainable Development of the European Union (EuropeAid/130381/D/ACT/ACP)

Governing precarious lives: Land grabs, geopolitics, and 'food security'

This paper has a two-part structure. The first part of the paper explores contemporary land grabs and shows how they both reflect and constitute a new neo-liberal governance structure over land and land-based resources. In this sense what is noteworthy about land grabs is their world-making capacity: the deals structure and make possible new relations of power in the global food economy. For this very reason it is crucial to understand how land grabs affect both the pace and direction of agrarian change. The second part of the paper examines the discursive strategies that align ‘food security’ concerns with land grabbing practices. Here I suggest that ‘food security’ supplies a moral sanction for land grabs. By mustering public empathy around a desire to ‘feed the future’, food security discourse – to borrow an idea from Fassin (2012) – converts a relationship of dominance (the governance of precarious lives) into a relationship of assistance (the provision of a remedy).This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/geoj.1206

MEDEAS: a new modeling framework integrating global biophysical and socioeconomic constraints

Producción CientíficaA diversity of integrated assessment models (IAMs) coexists due to the different approaches developed to deal with the complex interactions, high uncertainties and knowledge gaps within the environment and human societies. This paper describes the open-source MEDEAS modeling framework, which has been developed with the aim of informing decision-making to achieve the transition to sustainable energy systems with a focus on biophysical, economic, social and technological restrictions and tackling some of the limitations identified in the current IAMs. MEDEAS models include the following relevant characteristics: representation of biophysical constraints to energy availability; modeling of the mineral and energy investments for the energy transition, allowing a dynamic assessment of the potential mineral scarcities and computation of the net energy available to society; consistent representation of climate change damages with climate assessments by natural scientists; integration of detailed sectoral economic structure (input–output analysis) within a system dynamics approach; energy shifts driven by physical scarcity; and a rich set of socioeconomic and environmental impact indicators. The potentialities and novel insights that this framework brings are illustrated by the simulation of four variants of current trends with the MEDEAS-world model: the consideration of alternative plausible assumptions and methods, combined with the feedback-rich structure of the model, reveal dynamics and implications absent in classical models. Our results suggest that the continuation of current trends will drive significant biophysical scarcities and impacts which will most likely derive in regionalization (priority to security concerns and trade barriers), conflict, and ultimately, a severe global crisis which may lead to the collapse of our modern civilization. Despite depicting a much more worrying future than conventional projections of current trends, we however believe it is a more realistic counterfactual scenario that will allow the design of improved alternative sustainable pathways in future work.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project CO2017-85110-R)Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project JCI-2016–28833)MEDEAS project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under grant agree-ment no. 691287.LOCOMOTION project, funded by the EuropeanUnion’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programmeunder grant agreement no. 82110

Air conditioning and electricity expenditure: The role of climate in temperate countries

This paper investigates how households adopt and use air conditioning to adapt to climate change and increasingly high temperatures, which pose a threat to the health of vulnerable populations. The analysis examines conditions in eight temperate, industrialized countries (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland). The identification strategy exploits cross-country and cross-household variations by matching geocoded households with climate data. Our findings suggest that households respond to excess heat by purchasing and using air conditioners, leading to increased electricity consumption. Households on average spend 35%–42% more on electricity when they adopt air conditioning. Through an illustrative analysis, we show that climate change and the growing demand for air conditioning are likely to exacerbate energy poverty. The number of energy poor who spend a high share of income on electricity increases, and households in the lowest income quantile are the most negatively affected

The Economics of 1.5°C Climate Change

The economic case for limiting warming to 1.5°C is unclear, due to manifold uncertainties. However, it cannot be ruled out that the 1.5°C target passes a cost-benefit test. Costs are almost certainly high: The median global carbon price in 1.5°C scenarios implemented by various energy models is more than US$100 per metric ton of CO2 in 2020, for example. Benefits estimates range from much lower than this to much higher. Some of these uncertainties may reduce in the future, raising the question of how to hedge in the near term. Maintaining an option on limiting warming to 1.5°C means targeting it now. Setting off with higher emissions will make 1.5°C unattainable quickly without recourse to expensive large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR), or solar radiation management (SRM), which can be cheap but poses ambiguous risks society seems unwilling to take. Carbon pricing could reduce mitigation costs substantially compared with ramping up the current patchwork of regulatory instruments. Nonetheless, a mix of policies is justified and technology-specific approaches may be required. It is particularly important to step up mitigation finance to developing countries, where emissions abatement is relatively cheap

Energy Metabolism of 28 World Countries: A Multi-scale Integrated Analysis

In this paper the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Social Metabolism (MuSIASEM) is used to investigate the metabolic profile of 28 world countries. The years considered are 1995 and 2007 and the socio-economic and environmental data included in the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) are used to provide consistent comparisons between countries. The analyses are performed by considering the entire society (Level N), the household and the paid sectors (Level N-1) and the different economic sectors (Level N-2). The main results show that, despite the differences existing between countries, the increasing energy throughput and per-capita consumption contributed to change the metabolic profile of the countries considered in this paper

Towards a New Political Economy of Climate Change and Development

In this article, the authors propose a new political economy of climate change and development in which explicit attention is given to the way that ideas, power and resources are conceptualised, negotiated and implemented by different groups at different scales. The climate change and development interface warrants such attention because of its importance to achieving sustainable poverty reduction outcomes, cross‐sectoral nature, urgency and rapid emergence of international resource transfers, initiatives and governance architectures, and the frequent assumption of linear policymaking and apolitical, techno‐managerial solutions to the climate change challenge

Cities and climate change mitigation: Economic opportunities and governance challenges in Asia

Cities are central to the fight against climate change, but the IPCC recently noted that many cities — and particularly those in the developing world — lack the institutional, financial and technical capacities needed to switch to low emission development paths. Based on detailed case studies of three Asian cities, this paper finds that the adoption of low emission development strategies (LEDS) at the urban level could be economically attractive. However, it also argues that without a coordinated multi-level, cross-sectoral governance framework these opportunities for low carbon urban development are likely to be left unexploited. As these governance conditions are frequently not in place, we argue that these case study cities, and cities in similar contexts, are likely to miss even the economically attractive low carbon development opportunities and become increasingly locked in to higher cost, higher carbon development paths. Due to their growing size and importance, we conclude that the presence or absence of governance arrangements that enable the adoption of low carbon development strategies in Asian cities will have global implications for climate change

The role of hydrogen and fuel cells in the global energy system

Hydrogen technologies have experienced cycles of excessive expectations followed by disillusion. Nonetheless, a growing body of evidence suggests these technologies form an attractive option for the deep decarb onisation of global energy systems, and that recent improvements in their cost and performance point towards economic viability as well. This paper is a comprehensive review of the potential role that hydrogen could play in the provision of electricity, h eat, industry, transport and energy storage in a low - carbon energy system, and an assessment of the status of hydrogen in being able to fulfil that potential. The picture that emerges is one of qualified promise: hydrogen is well established in certain nic hes such as forklift trucks, while mainstream applications are now forthcoming. Hydrogen vehicles are available commercially in several countries, and 225,000 fuel cell home heating systems have been sold. This represents a step change from the situation of only five years ago. This review shows that challenges around cost and performance remain, and considerable improvements are still required for hydrogen to become truly competitive. But such competitiveness in the medium - term future no longer seems an unrealistic prospect, which fully justifies the growing interest and policy support for these technologies around the world