Energy performance and capital expenditures in manufacturing industries

Little is known about how firms change energy consumption over time. Yet, to meet global climate change targets, understanding how changes in firm investment impact environmental performance is important for policymakers and firms alike. To investigate the environmental performance of firms, we measure the energy consumption and efficiency of firms in the Netherlands’ manufacturing industries before and after large capital expenditures over the 2000 to 2008 period. Unique to this data set is that firm investment is decomposed into the following three streams: investment in buildings only, investment in equipment only, or a simultaneous investment in both buildings and equipment. We find that firms increase energy consumption when experiencing a simultaneous investment. However, after large capital expenditures, energy efficiency increases. Further decomposition by firm types suggests that the building capital investments of firms active in high-tech, energy-intensive, and low labor-intensive industries do not coincide with energy efficiency improvements while energy efficiency does increase with capital expenditures in equipment. From a policy perspective, it is important for regulators to understand firm investment and production processes, which help regulators understand when and where energy efficiency increases are feasible across firm types and expansionary production strategies. Firms, regulators, and other third parties may work together to develop an energy efficiency plan in line with investment strategies, including enhanced transparency by firms, energy efficiency subsidies, and R&D tax credits, for innovation. Targeted agreements may work to cooperatively improve energy performance

One finding is no finding:Toward a replication culture in family business research

Our goal is to foster the development of a healthy replication culture in family business research. Replication, which advances theory by confronting existing understanding with new evidence, is of paramount importance in creating a meaningful cumulative knowledge base. In the family business field, however, as in many other fields within the broader management literature, dedicated replications are largely absent. After a brief analysis of the likely causes and consequences of our collective avoidance of replication studies, we examine four types of replication of particular importance to the field and provide guidelines and recommendations for family business scholars interested in conducting such research. We invite journals and their editors to reflect on the role they can play in changing the incentive structures to conduct and submit useful replication studies and provide actionable suggestions for improvement. We illustrate contemporary examples of family business knowledge advancement through replication research

Assessing 1.5-2°C scenarios of integrated assessment models from a power system perspective - Linkage with a detailed hourly global electricity model

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are vital for identifying potential pathways for the longterm development of the global energy system in line with set climate targets to keep global temperature rise well below 2°C and to further pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. IAMs cover a broad spectrum of energy demand and supply sectors while simultaneously having the ability to account for interlinked impacts on ecological and economic systems. Due to their broad scope, global IAMs are limited in detail regarding spatial and temporal modelling resolution. Significant improvements have been made in recent years regarding power system representation in global IAMs. However, ongoing concerns exist within the scientific community regarding the suitability of global IAMs to properly simulate the challenges that arise with integration of vast quantities of variable renewable energy sources in the global power system

Connecting the continents. Power system modelling and capacity building for detailed assessments of global power sector decarbonization pathways

Deep decarbonization of the global energy sector is essential for reaching increasingly ambitious climate change mitigation targets. The momentum on global climate action is gathering speed, hence the need for energy research to accurately inform development pathways and decision making processes for the global energy sector is both critical and urgent. Electricity end use is expected to gain a larger role due to the potential for emission reductions in the electricity sector combined with the ability of electricity to displace fossil fuel use in other sectors. While completely decarbonised power systems based on very high penetrations of wind and solar energy are desirable, the technical and economic feasibility of power systems mostly or fully based on renewables remains a matter of debate. Furthermore, from a continental or global perspective, the role of flexible assets such as large-scale transmission interconnections are poorly understood. This thesis develops, applies, and disseminates a number of key foundation blocks for robust assessments of global power system decarbonization pathways by means of open methods and datasets that can be used with a broad range of modelling tools. The author constructs and uses a detailed global power system model with high technical, temporal, and spatial modelling resolution to assess the technical feasibility of scenarios coming from long-term planning models. The methodological open source soft-link framework presented here is carefully designed to respond to known limitations of Integrated Assessment Models in a manner that allows for iterative model coupling to pinpoint and improve key areas of power system representation within Integrated Assessment Models. The thesis results provide insights that planning models struggle to generate, for example regarding curtailment of renewable electricity, occurrence of unserved energy and the operation of flexible assets at hourly modelling resolution. The research pays particular attention to the potential for intercontinental trade of electricity in context of a globally integrated power grid. The main contributions of this thesis are the development, application and dissemination of new methods, datasets and models that improve power system modelling and capacity building efforts at the global scale. The foundation blocks provided by this research are currently contributing to improved assessments of power system decarbonization pathways and are enriching the evidence base underpinning global climate- and energy policy decisions

Magnetic flux eruptions at the root of time-lags in low-luminosity AGN

Sagittarius A$^\ast$ is a compact radio source at the center of the Milky Way that has not conclusively shown evidence for the presence of a relativistic jet. Nevertheless, indirect methods at radio frequencies do indicate consistent outflow signatures. Brinkerink et al. (2015) found temporal shifts between frequency bands, called time-lags, which are associated with flares and/or outflows of the accretion system. It is possible to gain information on the emission and potential outflow mechanics by interpreting these time-lags. By means of combined general-relativistic magnetrohydrodynamical and radiative transfer modeling, we study the origin of the time-lags for magnetically arrested disc models at three black hole spins ($a_\ast$ = 0.9375, 0, -0.9375). The study also includes a targeted `slow light' study for one of the best-fitting `fast light' windows. We were able to recover the time-lags found by Brinkerink et al. (2015) in various windows of our simulated lightcurves. The theoretical interpretation of these most-promising time-lag windows is threefold; i) a magnetic flux eruption perturbs the jet-disc boundary and creates a flux tube, ii) the flux tube orbits and creates a clear emission feature, and iii) the flux tube interacts with the jet-disc boundary. The best-fitting windows have an intermediate (i=30$^\circ$/50$^\circ$) inclination and zero-BH-spin. The targeted `slow light' study did not yield better-fitting time-lag results, which indicates that the fast vs. slow light paradign is often not intuitively understood and is likely influential in timing-sensitive studies.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

Lesmodule Teken en de ziekte van Lyme

Tijdens onze lerarenopleiding ontwikkelden wij een lesmodule die te gebruiken is als vervanging voor het hoofdtstuk Ecologie. Volgens de concept-context methode zijn alle begrippen gelinkt aan een onderwerp, namelijk 'teken'

On the prospects of imaging Sagittarius A* from space

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at sub-millimeter waves has the potential to image the shadow of the black hole in the Galactic Center, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and thereby test basic predictions of the theory of general relativity. We investigate the imaging prospects of a new Space VLBI mission concept. The setup consists of two satellites in polar or equatorial circular Medium-Earth Orbits with slightly different radii, resulting in a dense spiral-shaped uv-coverage with long baselines, allowing for extremely high-resolution and high-fidelity imaging of radio sources. We simulate observations of a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics model of Sgr A* for this configuration with noise calculated from model system parameters. After gridding the $uv$-plane and averaging visibilities accumulated over multiple months of integration, images of Sgr A* with a resolution of up to 4 $\mu$as could be reconstructed, allowing for stronger tests of general relativity and accretion models than with ground-based VLBI.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, published in Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 342, 201

System dynamics within typical days of a high variable 2030 European power system

The effect of variability in electricity generation on future high variable European power systems is a subject of extensive research within the current scientific literature. The common approach in these studies, regarding the assessment of the impact of the variability and related balancing assets, is by showing yearly aggregates (or longer) of results based on a variety of indicators. Although significant, these studies often lack in temporal details. This paper therefore focuses on the dynamics between load, generation, marginal cost and assets for balancing the generation variability, within a variety of typical days in a fully-integrated European power market. This is done by assessments of daily snapshots based on an hourly time resolution. The assessments underline the necessity of balancing assets, both during peaks as well as during lows in the output of variable generators. Interconnection capacity, electricity storage and demand response (DR) applications all contribute to renewables integration and to optimized utilization of cost-efficient generation capacity throughout the European power system. Important load flows from and towards load centers with high capacities of variable renewables are identified, as well as a significant role for transit countries with high interconnection capacities between these load centers. Despite the importance of electricity storage, it is shown that the traditional diurnal utilization of centralized electricity storage fleets becomes less viable with increasing penetration of variable renewables. A potential high CO2 price in the future European power market can become a determining factor in the system dynamics. Large price differentials in the merit order stimulate long distance flows as well as an increasing profitability for storage assets

Waisda?: video labeling game

The Waisda? video labeling game is a crowsourcing tool to collect user-generated metadata for video clips. It follows the paradigm of games-with-a-purpose, where two or more users play against each other by entering tags that describe the content of the video. Players score points by entering the same tags as one of the other players. As a result each video that is played in the game is annotated with tags that are anchored to a time point in the video. Waisda? has been deployed in two projects with videos from Dutch broadcasters. With the open source version of Waisda? crowdsourcing of video annotation becomes available for any online video collection

The 492 GHz emission of Sgr A* constrained by ALMA

We report linearly polarized continuum emission properties of Sgr A* at $\sim$492 GHz, based on the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observations. We used the observations of the likely unpolarized continuum emission of Titan, and the observations of C\textsc{i} line emission, to gauge the degree of spurious polarization. The Stokes I flux of 3.6$\pm$0.72 Jy during our run is consistent with extrapolations from the previous, lower frequency observations. We found that the continuum emission of Sgr A* at $\sim$492 GHz shows large amplitude differences between the XX and the YY correlations. The observed intensity ratio between the XX and YY correlations as a function of parallactic angle may be explained by a constant polarization position angle of $\sim$158$^{\circ}$$\pm$3$^{\circ}$. The fitted polarization percentage of Sgr A* during our observational period is 14\%$\pm$1.2\%. The calibrator quasar J1744-3116 we observed at the same night can be fitted to Stokes I = 252 mJy, with 7.9\%$\pm$0.9\% polarization in position angle P.A. = 4.1$^{\circ}$$\pm$4.2$^{\circ}$. The observed polarization percentage and polarization position angle in the present work appear consistent with those expected from longer wavelength observations in the period of 1999-2005. In particular, the polarization position angle at 492 GHz, expected from the previously fitted 167$^{\circ}$$\pm$7$^{\circ}$ intrinsic polarization position angle and (-5.6$\pm$0.7)$\times$10$^{5}$ rotation measure, is 155$^{+9}_{-8}$, which is consistent with our new measurement of polarization position angle within 1$\sigma$. The polarization percentage and the polarization position angle may be varying over the period of our ALMA 12m Array observations, which demands further investigation with future polarization observations.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 1st referee report received and revise