Water is a source of life… and energy. In this post, we are addressing the water-energy nexus in the urban context, where both resources are essential and at the same time critical with an unexorable increase in the demand due to demographic movements and economic growth. Traditional hidrological planning policies have been based on the capacity to regulate and increase water availability. This approach has led to the gradual depletion of the resource with over-exploited aquifers, loss of quality of the water supplied, deterioration of aquatic ecosysems or the appearance of conflicts between users. In parallel, we face the effects derived from climate change, which is undoubtedly a water crisis and a threat multiplier: floods, storms and droughts are becoming more frequent and extreme, and these trends are projected to increase as the climate continues to change. Furthermore, much of the water infrastructure in the developed world is now over 50 years old and needs to be replaced, improved or repaired. Extreme temperatures and aging infrastructure will aggravate the problem of water leaks and confirm the need to control and reduce leaks in drinking water networks.
In general, all these pressures on the urban water cycle imply an increase in energy consumption and operating costs. However, to date, energy is rarely mentioned in urban water planning strategies. In this way, cities face the continuous challenge of providing urban water services without increasing the impact on the environment. This, together with the perennial debate over whether water should be a “luxury good” or a “social good accessible to all”, could place water in the focus of the biggest geopolitical conflict of the 21st century.
This current context of water scarcity and climate emergency demands solutions to increase the cities resilience. In addition, Europe aims to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and municipalities will clearly play a fundamental role in this transition. The water sector can become a leader in providing the kind of green infrastructure, services and jobs needed to enable climate change mitigation and adaptation.
In CARTIF we are working on the European LIFE NEXUS project that proposes a paradigm shift by considering the urban water cycle as a source of renewable energy. Throughout the cycle there are locations with excess energy where it is necessary to adapt the flow or pressure to the supply conditions. Within the framework of the project, we are analyzing the potential of mini-hydropower systems to recover the unexploited energy at these sites where energy is being dissipated.
Our project addresses two complementary objectives. On the one hand, we have carried out the first European inventory of the mini-hydropower potential in European cities, which is already available through the project website and currently houses data from 101 locations. On the other hand, we seek to identify what type of technology is ideal for urban sites where the electricity generation capacity is usually less than 100 kW. Among the different systems available, the Pump as Turbine (PaT) technology has been selected and the novel integration of a PaT with a battery storage is being carried out to optimize the energy generation and use. The new prototype will be fully operational by the end of 2021 at the Drinking Water Treatment Plant (DWTP) of León in Spain. One of the objectives of the project will be to validate this innovative technology, obtain information on its real performance and analyze its viability. Specificallly, it is expected to have a generation of 252 MWh per year of renewable electricity and a 100% in GHG emisisons from th DWTP, which means avoiding the emission of 163 tons of CO2 equiv per year.
In this way, life nexus does its particular bit in the clean energy transition. Learn more about the project on its website, latest news, ad if you have data on potential locations o r existing facilities, do not hesitate a become a Follower of the project*.
*We encourage you to participate, since the most promising Folloers will receive in a later phase of the project a personalized report with the feasabilityof the technology.
In recent years, it has been heard more and more frequently talking about such an abstract concept as mathematical models in an abstract appearance. With the COVID-19 epidemic, news bulletins were filled with news with “predictions” about what could happen in the future and the impact of different confinement measures. This global emergency situation, and the lack of experience with something completely new, turned the problem into something too vast not to use any tool that would help us evaluate what were the best alternatives to manage the pandemic, and this is where the models play a fundamental role.
First, it is necessary to emphasize that the models are not a “divinatory science”, but are only a representation of reality. In fact, in our heads daily we build mental models and future scenarios to make decisions, that is, based on our past experience we anticipate and evaluate the consequences in the future of different alternatives, and based on this, we make choices about for example, what type of shoes wearing in a wedding, or how we organize the week. But when the system becomes too complex (many interconnected variables), we are left with only three options:
1) Go crazy trying to mentally analyse something immeasurable.
2) Take risks without thinking about future consequences.
3) Call on the help provided by formal models or tools when making decisions.
Of course, we are not going to build a model to decide what kind of clothes to take on a trip, but in the case of analysis of important decisions, such us certain policies and strategies that require large investments, or whose consequences are relevant for society, it is seems the most appropriate option.
In emergency situations, and with high uncertainty, as occurred during the pandemic, the models and planning tools built from them serve as a guide. No matter how much uncertainty the future inevitable implies, it is better to make “guided” decisions under the light of a headlamp than totally dark. According to George E.P. Box, “in essence, all the models are incorrect, the practical question is whether they are useful to us.”
Another undoubtedly emergency situation, although apparently more distant, is climate change. Due to the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the Industrial Revolution, the balance on the planet has been altered. CO2 is the gas that is currently contributing the most to this warming, basically because it is the gas that we have emitted the most in recent years. This gas, along with methane (CH4 ) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are called “long-lived” GHGs, because they persist in the atmosphere for decades and even centuries. Due to this, in climate policies it is essential to consider the dynamics of the climate system in which the effects are long-term, and in addition it is necessary to consider the inercia, that is to say, if in this year 2021, we cut all GHG emissions, the temperature would continue increasing. Therefore, the moment in which the policies are applied and implemented is also key.
Due to this, the use of dynamic models is essential for the design of climate policies, that is, models in which the variable “time” is the fundamental piece and, precisely, the objective is to be able to determine how certain variables of interest are going to evolve over time building scenarios (or different “possible” futures).
Likewise, due to the characteristics of the problem, the evaluation of climate policies is not only carried out in the short-medium term, but also needs to be done in the long term. For example, the European Union´ s climate neutrality target is set at 2050: almost 30 years from now!
Considering this global challenge, it is necessary to define planning instruments to give an “international and coordinated response”. Specifically, the European Union demands that each member state prepare the NECP (National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan) in which each country indicates its own decarbonization objectives as well as the measures to achieve them, including energy transition policies, together with an ante evaluation of these policies, precisely using this type of models and future projections.
Thus, the models are key support tools to help the politician or the person responsible of designing policies or strategies based on the information they offer. We know that perfection in real life (in real systems) does not exist, but we can make better decisions by evaluating which alternatives are better, or if they are simply feasible before implementing them. It would make no sense in a political plan to define objectives and measures by throwing numbers into the air. How much confidence would these long-term political promises give? What feeling would it produce in the population? Not just anger, but something worse: mistrust, leading to hopelessness and inaction. Therefore, planning tools have to: help understand the problem and raise awareness, and secondly, analyse and compare solutions, including their effectiveness, thus motivating the acceptance of said solutions as well as their future implementation.
But climate change is not the only problem in our society. Recently an investigation by the journal Science was released in the news, in which it warned about the threat of biodiversity due to the future massive deployment and without management of renewable energies in the territory. Therefore, planning instruments must go further and help us answer “somewhat” more complex questions: how to carry out the energy transition in an orderly and socially fair way? How to plan the territory to deal with climate change, favouring local development, and at the same time respecting biodiversity? In this regard, it is key in the design of climate and energy policies to also consider the different sustainable development objectives (social, economic, environmental,etc.) and therefore to use models that allow holistic analyses considering all the other aspects, such as through the so-called Integrated Assessments Models.
CARTIF participates in the development of this type of support tools for decision-making in matters of climate change in projects such as CCliMAP and LOCOMOTION. In the first case, modelling GHG emissions derived from territorial planning instruments at the municipal level. In the second project, through the development of IAMs (Integrated Assessment Models) in system dynamics, allowing the analysis and design of energy transition and sustainability policies even at the global level.
In companies it is essential to design and evaluate strategies before making decisions in order to use resources effectively. Our planet is the home we share, which provides us with the resources we need. What can interest us more than defining a good strategy to maintain the balance of our planet? It is clear that if it is necessary to radically change our roadmap, it is better that we know “how” as soon as possible.
Both biomethane and biohydrogen are two gases that have been going strong in our current energy landscape. Both have a renewable origin and their formation can be associated with CO2 capture and storage processes, another of the great objectives of our society to fight against global warming.
Biomethane is nothing other than methane with a renewable origin, as opposed to natural gas where methane has a fossil origin. Biomethane is typically generated by purifying the biogas produced in anaerobic digesters that treat waste streams such as sewage sludge, manure or other biodegradable streams. It is the operation generally known as the upgrading process [1]. Biomethane has the added advantage that it is chemically identical to natural gas, so it can be substituted in any of its applications. For this reason, biomethane is expected to play a transcendental role in the decarbonization of the Spanish and European economy with a view to 2050 [2].
If we return form biogas, its other major component is CO2, but there is the possibility of reintroducing this CO2 to the anaerobic digester or treating it in another reactor and, through what is known as the methane process, generating more biomethane [3]. That is, we can use CO2 to generate methane, who gives more? But this process is not as mature as that of conventional anaerobic digestion and, although it has been shown to be technically feasible (more than 100 operating plants are known in Europe), the performance of the process needs to improve so that its economic viability is out of all doubt.
Once we have the biomethane, another option we have is to generate green hydrogen (named for its renewable origin) through a well-known reforming process. The reforming of natural gas to produce hydrogen is a common industrial practice, so reforming biomethane is an entirely plausible option. The usual reforming is carried out by reacting methanewith water vapor, but there is already work that has shown the possibility of replacing this water with CO2, so we return to using carbon dioxide as a raw material, removing it from the atmosphere and instead producing the desired hydrogen.
But hydrogen can also have a biological origin, which is what is known as biohydrogen. In nature there are algae and bacteria that generate hydrogen through their metabolic cycles. These organisms, grown in a controlled environment, can also become a biohydrogen factory. In this case, and as it happened in the methanation processes, it has been shown that the processes work and can be scalable, but the yields that are currently achieved remain a barrier to their implementation for industrial purposes.
But that’s what research is for, to keep working and make these processes (and others that we will talk about on another occasion) a reality in the short-medium term.
[1] Hidalgo, D., Sanz-Bedate, S., Martín-Marroquín, J. M., Castro, J., & Antolín, G. (2020). Selective separation of CH4 and CO2 using membrane contactors. Renewable Energy, 150, 935-942.
[2] Elguera, N. M., Salas, M. D. C., Hidalgo, D., Marroquín, J. M., & Antolín, G. (2020). Biometano, el gas verde que pide paso en España. IndustriAmbiente: gestión medioambiental y energética, (30), 50-56.
[3] Hidalgo, D. Martín-Marroquín, J.M. (2020). Power-to-methane, coupling CO2 capture with fuel production: An overview. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 132, 110057.
Blockchain technology has been explained in a previous entry of this Blog, and another entry about Blockchain and the electric market customers is also available. This new entry is again focused on this technology but, in this case, it will be focused on all the opportunities offered by this technology in the environmental and energy sector.
Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs from now on) and, in particular, blockchain technology have the potential of transforming the energy sector. The World Economic Forum released a joint report identifying more than 65 blockchain use cases for the environment, including new business models for energy markets and, even more, moving carbon credits or renewable energy certificates onto the blockchain.
Its defining features are its distributed and immutable ledger and advance cryptography, which enable the transfer of a range of assets among parties securely and inexpensively without third-party intermediaries. Blockchain provides a new, decentralized and global computational infrastructure that is transforming many existing processes in business, governance and society, offering many opportunities to address multiple environmental challenges such al climate change, biodiversity loss and water scarcity.
Due to increasing integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), many consumers have become prosumers, who can both generate and consume energy. As generation of DERs can be unpredictable and intermittent, prosumers may decide to store their surplus energy using storage energy devices, or supply others who are in energy deficit. This energy trading is called Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading, and it is a novel paradigm of energy system generation where people can generate their own energy from (Renewable Energy Sources) RES in dwellings, offices and factories, and share it locally with each other. Waste heat and cold can be also traded in a similar way to energy from RES. One of the main contributions of DLTs in the scope of P2P Energy trading is to register all the transactions in a secure and non-mutable way, and to simplify the metering and billing system of the P2P energy trading market.
In the scope of the SO WHAT project, CARTIF has been involved in the definition of the business model linked with the use of Blockchain to exchange waste heat and cold. Besides, CARTIF has worked in a research internal project called OptiGrid which main aim was the development of innovative solutions in the scope of the smart grids. CARTIF is also working in a project called Energy Chain (subcontracted by Alpha Syltec Ingeniería) to jointly develop a platform to allow energy trading between prosumers. Both OptiGrid and Energy Chain are projects financed by the “Instituto de Competitividad e Innovación Empresarial” (ICE) and are focused on the use of blockchain as a driver to deploy platforms devoted to energy trading. In the scope of Energy Chain, Alpha Syltec Ingeniería will also develop machine learning algorithms that will interact with the blockchain platform providing useful data about generation and demand.
The use of blockchain in the scope of SmartCities is clear due to its applicability to transfer information in a secure and immutable way, reducing (and even removing) the amount of intermediaries. Blockchain can be used in multiple ways apart from the aforementioned one: it can push the use of electric vehicle (e.g., P2P Electric Vehicle Charging), it can be used as a driver of public empowerment (e.g., increasing the security level, the transparency and the reliability of elections, online surveys, referenda, etc.)…
Other examples of the use of blockchain is its use as a driver of off-set carbon footprint processes, increasing the transparency and security of the transactions, and its use to improve the traceability and transparency of green energy in relation to the Guarantee of origin (GoO). One example of the use of Blockchain in this sense is ClimateTrade, which main aim is to help companies to achieve carbon neutrality by offering them their carbon offsetting services.
Cities as New York and states as West Virginia have used blockchain to exchange energy or to vote using the mobile phone, Estonia is using it to manage personal data, and Dubai’s Smart City Program has addressed more than 500 blockchain projects that will change the way to interact with the city. Blockchain is a reality, and is here to stay.
Most users have been consuming electricity in the same way our entire lives. We simply know that we can plug in the electrical device wqe want at any time, and that, in return, at the end of the month, we get a bill (for many, more difficult to understand than an Egyptian hieroglyph, by the way). But this way of consuming electricity can change very soon (if it hasn´t already). Not for a long time, we can contribute with our own energy to the main grid without many complications, decide when is the best moment for us to consume, or partner with other users to benefit each other…or all these options at the same time.
In other words, the energy sector is moving from a model in which the user had a merely passive role, to a totally different one, where the user can have an active participation in the production, management and consumption of electricity. For this paradigm shift, a new word has emerged as a result of combining producer and consumer: prosumer.
Although the concept of prosumer is now broader, it originally refers to users who produces their own energy for their own consumption, and discharge the surpluses to the electrical network. In this way, not only we can consume less from the grid, but our electricity is also supplied to the main system, and we contribute to achieving a more sustainable model while we reduce our bill.
Given the rise of distributed generation facilities for self-consumption, largely driven by the publication of RD 244/2019 in Spain, it is not surprising that this type of prosumer is the most common. However, the options for prosumers are more and more varied, and are not only limited to installing solar panels on our roof.
For example, the interaction of the user with the main grid can also be more proactive by combining responsible electricity consumption with electricity tariffs which depend on the market price (rates indexed to the electricity pool market-the hourly market-, also called PVPCs tariffs in the case of Spain-stating for Small Consumer Voluntary Price-, for users with a contracted power lower than 10kW).With this type of tariff, every day you can know the hourly price of electricity for the next day, so that if today we are told that tomorrow morning the price of electricity will cost almost 90% less than it costs right now (as happened a few days ago in the Iberian Peninsula(, we can decide if we prefer no to turn on certain appliances today (e.g. washing machine, dryer or dishwasher, in the case of residential consumers), and use them tomorrow, hence getting some savings due to the energy term associated to their consumptions.
But, what happens when there is hardly any sun or wind, and the prices of the electricity market soar to all-time highs, as happened a few weeks ago during the storm Filomena in Spain? In the previous case,basically we would have to ´´ endure the downpour´ and pay it at the end of the month. How ever, if we had energy storage solutions, we could avoid these type of scenarios, and in general we could reduce our consumption from the grid durign periods when the price of energy is high. This prosumer alternative is also very simple: at night or in the morning, when electricity is cheaper, we could program the charging of our energy storage equipment (electric batteries, including our own electric vehicle, but also thrmal systems of thermoelectricc), so that when the price of electricity went up, we would not have to pay its exorbitant costs, but could use our stored energy.
Precisely, this combination of prosumer options– installation of a renewable production system, storage, dynamic rates and active management of our demand- is part of the study that is being considered in the MiniStor Project, where CARTIF has participated since last year. In this project, a thermoelectric storage system that integrates lithium batteries, phase change materials and a thermochemical reactor is being developed, also including hybrid solar panels that produce both heat and electricity and an optimal energy management, considering both the prediction of our consumption, the prediction of our systems production, and the electricicty costs. A very interesting challenge for which we will be able to tell you more about very soon.
As we have seen, the prosumers´ participation options go far beyond having our own self-consumption facility (which is not a small thing), and, although this time we have presented a few, the alternatives where this actor has a fundamental role are almost infinite (demand aggregators, blockchain integration, microgrids, energy communities…) Surely, in a short time others options will emerge, that at the moment we cannot imagine. What is clear, is that the role of prosumers is already considered as decisive, we are at the beginning of what can be a true paradigm shift in the energy sector, and from CARTIF we are on the trail to be leaders in this revolution.
As you may already know, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) as a consequence of human activity is one of the main reasons behind the faster pace of the climate change in the last decades. And among the wide range of causes, passenger cars are one of the main sources of CO2 emissions, accounting for a 12% of the total emissions (European Commission).
For this reason, the European Union has been adopting increasingly stricter measures to regulate the levels of emissions. In 2015, a limit of 130 grams CO2/km was set. Moreover, by 2021 a more ambitious target is planned to be fixed at 95 grams CO2/km.
In this context, car manufacturers have been forced to reduce fuel consumption (or increasing the autonomy in electric vehicles) and emissions in his petrol and diesel-fuelled models. How can automakers do that? Besides designing more efficient engines, the main strategy is lightweighting. This technique consists of reducing the weight of the car by replacing the heavier materials (i.e. steel) by lighter ones such as plastic or composites.
However, currently the mismanagement and misuse of plastics rather than the material itself is one of the top environmental issues, since 8 million tons out of the 300 million tons of plastic which are annually produced end up in the ocean (According to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature). So seems that increasing the use of plastics in cars does not look like and ideal solution, right? Well, how about using an alternative material with similar of even better performance than conventional plastics and reduced environmental footprint? It doesn’t seem an easy task, although bioplastics may be part of the answer.
What are bioplastics, and why they seem to be so trendy nowadays? According to European Bioplastics, it’s a heterogeneous set of materials with different properties and applications which can be biobased, biodegradable or both.
In other words, since they are biobased, their use potentially reduce the consumption of fossil fuels while their biodegradability widens the possibilities of treatment at the end-of-life stage. As a result, these materials could achieve the desired combination of performance and sustainability.
This is what the BIOMOTIVEproject is all about. It tries to develop materials (textile fibres, foams made of polyurethane for automotive seating and other polyurethane-based parts for the interior of cars) from biobased sources which combine good technical properties with reduced environmental impact. Starting from renewable raw materials such as forest biomass and vegetable oils not in competition with the food chain, it is expected to produce at industrial scale products with up to 80% biobased content.
The project has received funding under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and gathers European private companies and institutions sharing the ideal of reducing the impact of the industry paving the way towards a more sustainable economy.
The role of CARTIFin the project is to perform the sustainability assessment of the final products, since the prefix “bio” does not necessarily mean that a product is better for the environment than its fossil-based counterpart. To determine that on a scientific basis, it is important to evaluate the impacts of the product along its whole life cycle (that is, from the extraction of raw materials to the end of life) considering not only the environmental impacts, but also social and economic aspects.
So the next time you are holding a plastic object, before throwing it away, it is worth considering from where it came and where will it go.
