Undoubtedly, the electric sector in Spain has evolved during the past years, especially with regard to self-supply aspects. Time has elapsed since 2004, when the premium regime for the renewable energies was established. Gone are the first regulations about self-supply (RD 1699/2011) which for the first time considered the existence of individual facilities within the houses and set out the procedure and administrative conditions that they must fulfil, at the expense of a new Royal Decree that, due to policy issues, never was materialized.
Also far away is the regulation about the elimination of the bonus for sustainable energies, being the first blow suffered by this sector; what followed was not better. The subsequent law 24/2013 was branded as restrictive and discriminatory by the National Energy Commission (CNE), since not only was the self-supply not fostered among citizens, but also the register required complex administrative procedure and the document was not clear. Besides that, it referred to a potential economic tax on the self-consumed energy.
The following years were governed by some uncertainty, since the Royal Decree that should legally regulate all the proposed aspects was not published, thus, although the previous RD was still in force, it was feared that the new regulation was published at any moment. This caused a big paralysation of the electric and sustainable sector, which meant a fastdisappearance of companies and jobs.
Finally, the so-feared Royal Decree (RD 900/2015), better known as the “sun taxed RD”, saw the light. Its more controversial aspect was the establishment of a tax on the self-consumed energy, which raised up plenty of social and environmental organizations and official organisms against it. This legislation considered some transitory provisions exempting the small facilities of paying some taxes but, due to its temporary nature, citizens did not show interest on this kind of investments.
After some years of inactivity for this sector and by means of a government change, some months ago the Royal Decree – Law 15/2018 was released, opening the door for the active participation of the citizens in the electric market through the self-supply, in line with the current European energy policies. Recently, the Royal-Decree 244/2019 described and regulated the administrative, technical and economic conditions of the electric self-supply, including concepts such as the collective facilities or the net-billing, besides different modalities not considered up to date, which will facilitate the creation and incorporation of energy communities to the electric system.
This will enable a faster transition towards a more sustainable energy system thanks to the increase of the renewable energy generation rate. A fairer system, as the real needs of the consumers will be considered. A more autonomous market, since the dependency on external fossil fuels for power generation will be reduced.
In our daily life, we are surrounded by radioactivity, from natural or artificial origin. Most of the radioactivity in the environment results from natural elements. In fact, there are radioactive elements in many foods and drinking water. But… How do these elements reach drinking water?
The radionuclides or radioactive isotopes are naturally present in the rocks of the earth’s crust, being the uranium mines a good example of this phenomenon. The content of these natural radionuclides varies between different rocks and soil types, with granite formations being one of the ones with the highest radionuclide content. When groundwater is in contact with these subsoils, it progressively degrades the rocks, dissolving and dragging radionuclides that can be integrated in his chemical composition in concentrations that exceed the standards required by Council Directive 2013/51/Euratom of 22 October 2013. The radionuclides that may be present in drinking water are mainly radon (222Rn), uranium (238U, 234U) and radium (226Ra), among others.
In Spain, the control of radioactive substances in water for human consumption is established according to Royal Decree 140/2003, which indicates the radioactivity parameters to be measured and the maximum values allowed. This RD quotes “all the data generated from the controls of radioactive substances in drinking water or water for the water production for human consumption must be notified in the National Information System on Drinking Water (SINAC)”.
But, do citizens really have access to information about the radiological quality of drinking water? During the development of one of the transversal activities of the LIFE ALCHEMIA project, it has been concluded that, really, the answer varies greatly depending on the country. This European project, co-financed by the LIFE Programme of the European Union, aims to demonstrate the feasibility of environmentally sustainable systems based on oxidations with manganese dioxide and bed filters to removal/reduce the natural radioactivity in water, and minimize the generation of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) in the purification stages.
The LIFE ALCHEMIA project is developing databases that show the levels of natural radioactivity in treated water in drinking water treatment plants throughout the European Union, and it has been observed that in countries such as France or Estonia, citizens have free access to this information, while in countries like Finland or Sweden this information is not public or is not easily accessible. Spain is within this second group. In fact, looking at the SINAC (National Information System on Drinking Water), it is verified that the information on the radiological quality of water, is not accessible to the citizen.
Therefore, hundreds of water managers and City Councils have been contacted to request information, but only a few have responded to this request. This situation is more worrying when the high levels of uranium and thorium present in the subsoil of provinces such as Almería (province where LIFE ALCHEMIA is operating three pilot plants), Pontevedra, Ourense, Salamanca, Cáceres or Badajoz are verified.
This lack of transparency may be due to the fact that the concept of radioactivity does not have a good reputation due to the different catastrophes associated with it, so it is thought that radioactivity is indicative of “death”, even though these catastrophes have no relation to natural radioactivity.
As a final reflexion, three questions:
Did I know that water from my tap may contain natural radioactivity?
Do I know the radiological characteristics of water I drink daily?
And if I want to know them, do I know where I have to go and can I really get that data?
If you try to answer these three questions, you can draw your own conclusions about how this environmental problem is addressed in your locality.
R2CITIES, the Smart City project with which our city began the road towards efficiency and sustainability, has come to an end. Five years of project, and some more until it materialized, have been necessary to design, implement and evaluate the energy rehabilitation of three districts in cities as different socio-economically and urbanistically as Valladolid (in Spain), Genoa (in Italy) and Kartal (in Turkey). The project, funded by the European Commission under the FP7 program and coordinated by the CARTIF Technology Centre, has developed a methodology that guarantees success in its implementation for large-scale interventions in the energy rehabilitation of districts.
The main activities in Valladolid have been carried out in the neighborhood of Cuatro de Marzo. For a few months, the 13 residential buildings which have been rehabilitated energically are perfectly recognizable, although without losing the identity that marks the aesthetics of the neighborhood. Each of these properties has undergone a series of common modifications:
Installation of a thermal insulation in facade and roofs.
Replacing and bending windows.
Installation of solar panels to cover 60% of the demand for domestic hot water (DHW).
Renewal of boilers.
Installation of high efficiency luminaires in the common areas of buildings.
To complement the works and verify their effectiveness, the information on energy consumption and the comfort parameters of the interior of the dwellings (temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration) has been analyzed in order to evaluate the efficiency of the implemented solutions.
As I commented at the beginning of this text, R2CITIES was the first major city project that CARTIF proposed to the City Council and, therefore, to the city of Valladolid. In 2012, the concept of “Smart City” was still unknown to most citizens. In essence, what the EU tried to promote was the awareness of the consumers of resources, since our consumption was excessive and, what is worse, unsustainable. For this reason, these projects proposed solutions at the district (or neighborhood) scale to drastically improve the energy efficiency of those homes built decades ago, when the current environmental saving and sustainability standards were not determining factors for the construction sector.
Applying state-of-the-art technological solutions, these projects wanted to demonstrate, in a practical and measurable way, that the cost of electricity and gas could be reduced and, in addition, the comfort of the tenants of the dwellings could be considerably improved.
In the specific case of the Cuatro de Marzo, a residential neighborhood located in the center of Valladolid and whose homes were built in the 50s, numerous problems caused by moisture condensation in facades or in rooms that do not achieve rise of 17ºC with heating at full capacity have been solved. All this thanks to the isolation of the buildings. In addition to achieving significant savings in the heating bill, which is crucial in a region with a climate of extreme temperatures.
Additionally, and available to electric vehicle users throughout the city, it has been installed a recharging point powered by solar energy that captures a 3.7 kWpphotovoltaic marquee located inside the neighborhood.
Another feature common to smart city projects is that practical demonstrators are located in several cities. In the case of R2CITIES, the elected ones were the districts of Lavatrici, in Genoa, and Yakacik, in Kartal. In total, more than 49,500 m2 have been renovated in the three cities involved, achieving an overall reduction of 5,342,672 kWh / year in primary energy consumed (which represents an energy saving of 54%), while at the same time they stop emitting 2,393 t of CO2 per year.
Through the journey carried out in R2CITIES, we had the opportunity to expand our knowledge and experience in the energy renovation of urban residential spaces. With the future goal of having almost zero energy consumption cities, our project has implemented a set of technological solutions in the three demonstrators to reduce their energy demand and increase the use of renewable energy in them. This has allowed us to face both technical challenges and overcome numerous socio-economic barriers, allowing us to gain experience in large-scale district renewal strategies that we would like to share with all the professionals involved in the sector.
Both results obtained and experience gained, we share them with you through the material available on the website of our project, as well as we did in the conference By & For Citizens that was held in Valladolid on September 20 and 21. A conference where, in addition to R2CITIES ‘experience, the other city projects that we lead were presented: CITyFiED, REMOURBAN, mySMARTLife andUrbanGreenUp.
In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind… an ingenious knight glimpses on the horizon old windmills. Believing that they were giants, he tries to defeat them with the help of his squire and the available weapons of the time. Do you recognise this scene? What if we frame it in the current era?
We are driving on the motorway and suddenly we glimpse on the horizon something that nowadays we do not consider giants: it is a wind farm composed of more than 20 wind turbines in charge of generating energy in a more sustainable way, but, once its function is fulfilled generate a large amount of waste that must be managed in an appropriate manner.
My question is, why do not we fight current problems with the resources of the moment: legislation, financing and research?
Allow me a brief description of the current situation. Since the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the industrial revolution, the ways of production and consumption changed radically, encouraging a rapid transformation of production systems to an unsustainable linear system due to the large amount of material and energy consumed, reinforced by the growth in consumption. Incompatible situation with a world of resources and capacity for adaptation limited to the growing impact generated by emissions of pollutants and the production of waste.
Therefore, with the aim of radically changing the current linear system of production and consumption, the European Commission, through the publication of a set of directives, has adopted an ambitious packageof new measures to assist in the transition of a Circular Economy (EC) that allows the use of resources in a more sustainable way. This fact will allow to close the life cycle of the products through greater recycling and reuse, that is, what is known as “cradle to the cradle”, bringing benefits both to the environment and to the economy.
From the conjunction of the above, together with the LIFE program and a consortium of companies of Castilla y León, including CARTIF, emerged LIFE REFIBRE, a demonstration project that aims to close the circle of a specific waste, the wind turbine blades.
The environmental problem generated by this type of waste is the result of two factors. On the one hand, the forecasts about the growing need to manage it, together with the inconvenience of its too large volume, give rise to problems in the land use of landfills where its final disposal is made. On the other, the management of this type of waste through other types of treatments, chemical or thermal, cause the emission of toxic substances into the atmosphere, as well as a greater energy consumption of these processes (Composites UK Lcd).
For all this, the actions that are being carried out within the LIFE REFIBRE project are aimed at reducing the waste of wind turbine blades sent to landfill through a mechanical recycling process, designed within the framework of the project, which will generate a new raw material, fiberglass. Once the fiberglass has been recovered and classified according to its size, it is introduced as a raw material in asphalt mixes. This process aims to achieve the improvement of the technical characteristics of this product, as well as a more sustainable management of wind turbine blades in disuse.
To conclude and as a farewell, I ask you a question: why do not we apply the concept of Circular Economy in our daily life? I can think of an example: reuse plastic bottles as pots.
From the creators of “What doesn´t kill you makes you fatter or is a sin” and “You don´t know what to eat” appears “Take care if you like overcooking!” and “Nightmare in the kitchen, there is acrylamide in your food“.
For years it was known that acrylamide was a toxic substance present in tobacco smoke and in industrial processes such as paper manufacturing, metal extraction, textile industry, colorants and other processes such as cosmetic additives or in water treatment. What nobody could imagine was that it also appears naturally when we are cooking foods such as potato crisps, French fries, biscuits and coffee.
It was first detected in foods in 2002 in Sweden when this chemical was found in starchy foods. According to experts, acrylamide is converted in the body into a chemical compound called glycidamide, which causes mutations and DNA damage that could initiate a cancerous process. The main chemical process that causes this is known as the Maillard Reaction; between sugars and amino acids (mainly one called asparagine) that are naturally present in many foods. It is the same reaction that ‘browns’ food (consequence of some pigments called melanoidins) and affects its taste and smell (due to substances such as furans). For this reason, the color could be a very practical guide for detecting acrylamide in foods.
Following, there is a summary of the evolution of the acrylamide topic according to the opinion of experts and different authorities in food safety:
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC): classifies it as probable carcinogens in humans (group 2A). This designation is applied when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans as well as sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals. For this reason, the authorities recommend that exposure to acrylamide should be as minimal as possible.
World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO/WHO): admits that there are many doubts about the mechanism of action of acrylamide and also about the estimation of the maximum recommended intakes or how the data obtained in animals have been extrapolated to humans. They insist especially on the need for more research on topics such as the associated risks in humans, quantification of acrylamide in diets other than European ones and identify the speed of the human body to neutralize acrylamide. In 2009 FAO/WHO published a code of practice for the reduction of acrylamide in food. A large amount of information on acrylamide is located on the FAO/WHO portal ‘Acrylamide Information Network’.
European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): it is still not clear whether the consumption of this component has an effect on the risk of developing cancer in humans. In the following link you can find all the information published by the EFSA related to acrylamide since 2002. Industry (Food and Drink Europe) has developed a document called ‘toolbox’ containing measures that can be applied by the different sectors of food industry to bring its levels down.
European Commission: in November 20th, 2017 the Reglament (UE) 2017/2158 is published containing mitigation measures and benchmark levels for the reduction of the presence of acrylamide in food. The Regulation establishes mandatory mitigation measures for food companies (industry, catering and restoration). At the moment, there are only levels of reference but everything indicates that in the future they will become maximum limits.
Spanish Agency of consumption, food security and nutrition (AECOSAN): is in full campaign of information to diminish the exhibition of acrylamide among consumers and to sensitize the population on the health risks of it. The motto of the campaign: ‘Choose dorado, choose health’. In the following video and link you can find simple recommendations to control the formation of acrylamide when cooking at home.
Undoubtedly, the issue of acrylamide will continue to give much to talk about over the next few years. In CARTIF we have just launched the COLOR Project: “Acrylamide reduction in processed foods” approved in the FEDER INTERCONECTA 2018 call. In this Project, the companies GALLETAS GULLÓN, CYL IBERSNACKS and COOPERATIVA AGRÍCOLA SANTA MARTA will join efforts to achieve the following objectives:
To reduce acrylamide in biscuit products and chips.
To obtain olive oils capable of counteracting the formation of acrylamide in processed foods.
To develop an indirect analytical method to quantify acrylamide more quickly, easily and economically than conventional analytical methods by measuring the COLOR of foods. In the Project we have the collaboration of the Institute of Science and Technology of Food and Nutrition (ICTAN-CSIC) and the Research Group, Food Quality and Microbiology (GRUPO CAMIALI) of the University of Extremadura.
Entomophagy, or insect consumption by humans, is not a novelty to anyone. Diets based on insects and arthropods are fully accepted in many countries and cultures, especially in South America, Asia or Africa. Even they are a real delicacy for some gourmets experts, for which they pay very high prices. There are markets for edible insects, at prohibitive prices, in cities such as New York, Tokyo, Mexico or Los Angeles, and some of the most famous international chefs include them in their famous recipes.
They do not have a single fault, nutritionally speaking. They are a balanced and healthy food, with high protein content, rich in essential amino acids. They are an important source of unsaturated fatty acids and chitin, besides of having vitamins and minerals beneficial for our body.
However, it is true that these ‘bugs’ have attracted the attention of the media, research institutions and members of food industry in recent months. Why now?
Experts say insects can provide a part of the necessary calories in countries where the consumption of some foods is limited. The Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations (FAO) expects the world population will increase by 2050 in 9700 million people, about 24% people more than now, so there will be a greater need to supply food. Therefore, it could be a solution to help reducing the levels of hunger in the world.
On the other hand, agriculture and livestock, as we know them today, are primary activities that emit greenhouse gases. In comparison, insect could be produced with lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions and water consumption. Therefore, the incorporation of these new ingredients to our market list can also improve the situation of the planet in the climate change’s fight, as well as contributing to the circular economy process due to insects can feed with agrifood waste.
In addition to these reasons, on January 1st, Regulation (EU) 2215/2283 come into force, which includes insects within the category of ‘novel foods’, which is a big step to simplify the authorization process.
And, if eating insects have so many advantages, why are they not consumed regularly in Spain and in many other Western countries?
Because, in spite of legislation, there is an emotional and cultural rejection to include them in our plates. In other words, they make us feel sick!
This argument has been demonstrated by a pioneering experiment through blind tasting of different foods prepared with insects and monitored with neuroscientific tools, carried out in the context of GO_INSECT and ECIPA projects. These are two innovative initiatives related to the breeding of insects for food as an alternative and sustainable source of proteins. CARTIF takes part in the first one, a Supra-autonomic Operative Group, which has the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply.
This blind tasting has served to demonstrate that taste is not the reason why we do not choose insects for eating. The main reason is the appearance of them, knowing what they are, being aware that we are going to eat something disgusting for us.
How did the experiment carry out?
28 people participated in the tasting, which took place at the Veterinary School of the University of Zaragoza, while the electrodermal activity of us was recorded. Previously, we were warned products of the tasting could contain lactose, gluten, nuts, crustaceans and insects.
Participants tasted four dishes with insects in their composition, and a fifth dish without them, which served as base of comparison. In three of those that contained insects, they were processed and were not visible directly to the eye. In the fourth, insects were easily recognizable.
All these options were carefully elaborated and tested in advance in order to avoid mistakes in the evaluation. Bitbrain Company’s technology measured sensory responses, both when visualizing the food and when eating it. At the end, they evaluated with and individual survey the satisfaction to each elaboration.
And the results?
The non-conscious emotional response to the three first dishes, which have insects in their composition in a non-visible way, fell within the normal parameters to the tasting of the rest. That is, the fact that a plate contains insects does not influence negatively in the taste and is not detected at the physiological level either.
On the other hand, the emotional impact of the participants when we tasted the whole insect (small dry larvae of Tenebrio molitor or flour worm) was much higher than in the resto of the dishes. Even, the emotional impact was greater during the visualization than during the intake. That is to say, what produces that impact is the knowledge of knowing that what we have before us is an insect, not so much the consumption.
At a conscious level, the average score given to the dishes in which the insects were incorporated as flour was 7’6. Only one participant did not agree to taste the plate of the whole insect. Those who taste it marked a 5’9 of average grade.
After knowing that all the products we had tested contained insects, secured we would eat them again. Only one of the participants confirmed in the survey will not buy products that had been fed with insects.
So, at least, we should give them a chance, even if they are masked. More than 2 billion people already incorporate them into their diet, so a quarter of the world’s population cannot be wrong.
