Sustainable Energy –

19EE017
Open Elective – IV
T S Kishore, M Vinay Kumar & N S S Rama
Krishna
EEE, GMRIT
 Sustainable Development
• According to 1987 World Commission on Environment
and Development (WCED) (Brundtland Commission)
report - ‘Our Common Future’ –

• “Sustainable development is development that meets

the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

• It aims at bringing environmental and development

issues together with the future in mind
 Energy
• Energy is one of the essential needs of a functioning
society.
• The scale of its use is closely associated with its
capabilities and the quality of life that its members
experience.
• Energy is an integral part of global commerce and its use
has expanded rapidly as both population and per capita
consumption have grown.
• Concerns about the sustainability of present energy-use
practices are now arising in several areas:
– the rapid depletion of nonrenewable resources,
– the impacts of emissions on the global environment,
– global instabilities that affect the security of supplies.
Energy sources and conversion
processes
 Sustainable Energy
• Sustainable energy is that which can be provided without
adverse effect on the earth’ s biosphere.
• However, no such form of energy supply exists.
• All require some form either of land use, with its
attendant
disruption of the associated ecosystems, or of
extraction, which can be disruptive for fossil fuels,
though less so for nuclear ones.
• Ultimately, all of these extracted materials reenter the
biosphere as wastes, where their sequestration practices
are
at least as important as their masses in determining the
accompanying ecological disruption.
• Sustainable energy: A dynamic harmony between the
equitable availability of energy-intensive goods and
services to all people and the preservation of the earth
for future generations.
• Sustainable development is all about…

Ecological Value
sustainabilit
y s

Social Economic
desirabilit Circum
y
viability
stance
Belief
s s
 21 Issues for the 21 st century
• 21st century environmental issues are
classified as
– Cross cutting issues
– Biodiversity and land issues
– Fresh waters and marine issues
– Climate change issues
– Energy, technology and waste issues
S.No Issue Category
Aligning Governance to the Challenges of
1
Global Sustainability
Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and
2
Moving Towards a Green Economy .
3 Reconnecting Science and Policy
Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Cross cutting issues
4 Changes in Human Behaviour towards the
Environment
New Concepts for Coping with Creeping
5
Changes and Imminent Thresholds .
Coping with Migration Caused by New
6
Aspects of Environmental Change
New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and
7
Food Security for 9 Billion People
Integrating Biodiversity across the
8
Environmental and Economic Agendas Food, Biodiversity and
Land Issues
9 Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience
Responding to New National and International
10
Pressures on Land
S.No Issue Category
New Insights on Water-Land Interactions:
11
Shift in the Management Paradigm?
Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters
12
in Developing Countries. Freshwaters and Marine
Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Issues
13
Requires Integrated Ocean Governance
Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing
14
Pressures with Adaptive Governance
New Challenges for Climate Change
15 Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the
Unintended Consequences
Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Climate Change Issues
16
Changing Frequency of Extreme Events

17 Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat

S.No Issue Category
Accelerating the Implementation of
18 Environmentally-Friendly Renewable Energy
Systems
Greater Risk than Necessary? The Need for a
19 New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel
Technologies and Chemicals Energy, Technology, and
Waste Issues
Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the
20 Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and
Avoiding Electronic Waste
The Environmental Consequences of
21
Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors
 Critical challenges for a
sustainable energy future
The 5 major challenges for sustainable energy future
are

1) The Challenge of Climate Change

2) Energy Economic Efficiency
3) Energy Return on Energy Invested
4) Cost of Energy Production
5) Other Costs of Energy Development
1. The Challenge of Climate Change
• Climate change refers to long-term shifts in
temperatures and weather patterns.
• These shifts may be natural, such as through variations
in the solar cycle.
• But since the 1800s, human activities have been the
main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning
fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
• Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions
that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth,
trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
• Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing
climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These
come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a
building, for example. Clearing land and forests can also
release carbon dioxide. Landfills for garbage are a major
source of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport,
buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main
emitters.
• Effects
– Change Will Continue Through This Century and Beyond
– Temperatures Will Continue to Rise
– Frost-free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen
– Frost-free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen
– More Droughts and Heat Waves
– Hurricanes Will Become Stronger and More Intense
– Sea Level Will Rise 1-8 feet by 2100
– Arctic Likely to Become Ice-Free
 2. Energy Economic Efficiency
• Energy efficiency is a widely used term in the public
realm. In engineering, there are technical meanings:
generation efficiency, conversion efficiency, or appliance
efficiency.
• There is also a concept of economic efficiency.
• Economic efficiency refers to the ratio of resources and
energy used to produce goods and services.
• Economic efficiency always improves profitability and is
a necessary part of the strategy for adapting to resource
constraints in a prosperous manner.
• There is a direct coupling between the wealth of a
country and its energy use.
• Although energy consumption and wealth are highly
inter-related, a number of countries have twice the
energy economic efficiency but with the same standard
of living.
• The low energy economic efficiency of some countries
has resulted in an enormous discrepancy in relative
energy use with the rest of the world
 3. Energy Return on Energy
Invested
• Energy transformation systems take natural resources
from the environment and produce fuels and electricity
for sale in the economy.
• They initially require an investment in money and
materials as well as in energy for manufacture and
installation.
• Once installed, the energy production system will use or
consume natural resources and fuel to generate
electricity, or it will extract and process resources into
fuel.
• During the lifetime of the energy transformation plant,
there will also be maintenance and replacement
requirements.
• If we put all of these inputs and outputs in terms of
energy, we can compare the consumer energy produced
for the market to the energy required either from the
economy or parasitic internal use.
• The main point of examining the EROI is to compare
different energy transformation systems in terms of their
effectiveness.
• EROI is a quantitative means to understand the past,
present, and future net flows of energy to the economy
for different energy transformation technologies.
• Even though EROI is valuable for comparing the
efficiency of different means of providing marketable
energy, it does not take into account the impact of
carbon emissions.
• Although coal-fired electric power generation has a
higher EROI than electricity generation by solar
photovoltaics (PV) or geothermal power, these
renewable technologies have dramatically lower life
cycle carbon emissions and thus are among the
technologies of choice for limiting global temperature
rise.
• Thus, while EROI can be a useful metric for comparing
fossil fuel technologies to each other and renewable
technologies to each other, life cycle greenhouse gas
emissions or the carbon payback period are more useful
for comparing conventional and renewable sources to
each other and determining the best path forward to
address climate change.
 4. Cost of Energy Production
• The capital cost per kilowatt (kW) capacity is a way
to compare the cost of building an energy
production system to the market value of the energy
produced.
• The investment costs include the capital cost, which
is the cost of engineering and building the plant, plus
maintenance and cost of fuel.
• The amount of energy produced for sale depends on
the plant capacity and the number of hours per year
the plant is generating at capacity, called the utility
factor, and the ability of the plant to generate on
demand during peak times.
• A broad perspective of the capital and levelized
energy costs of renewables, as well as more
traditional energy technologies has been
reported in literature.
• Such estimates depend on assumptions such
as the cost of money or the assumed life of the
system
• They do not include the benefit of subsidies for
the alternative sources (e.g., investment and
production tax credits). Therefore, actual costs
after subsidies for these are lower.
• These estimates also do not include social and
environmental costs, which are much higher
for
conventional technologies.
 5. Other Costs of Energy
Development
• Land has a potential for producing food, fibers, and
wood. Fossil fuel sources have a great energy density,
whereas the renewable sources (except geothermal)
are very diffuse and therefore require larger power
plant areas.
• However, fossil fuels and nuclear require mining, and
fossil fuels also require pipelines. When these areas
are
accounted for, the areas needed for coal and natural
gas are comparable to that needed for the solar
technologies.
• Directly impacted wind land area is very low because
only the wind turbine footprints and permanent service
roads have been included, and the land between
turbines can be used for agricultural or other purposes.
 Definitions
• What energy does and what energy is ?
• Energy is the capacity or ability to do work.
 Sustainability Indicators
• when one evaluates attributes of different types (e.g.,
cost, performance, safety, environmental impact),
different measures are used.
• In order to judge whether a particular system is better
than an alternative, one needs to have a way of putting
these measures on a common basis.
• Indicators can be thought of as measurable quantities
that can be related to all significant parameters.
• Because of the large number of systems that interact
to form the complex web, many different indicators will
pertain to pieces of the whole picture.
• How to apply the right indicators to a particular
assessment is a major challenge, so it is important to
have some ways of prioritizing different levels and
types of indicators.
• Sustainable progress in the 21 century have three
st

broad indicators that will measure progress

toward main goals related to the environment, the
economy, and society.
• Under each main goal are a myriad of
subindicators. Following are some of the
subindicators and goals for these three categories:
• Environmental
– Government and institutional commitment (countries
with a national strategy for sustainable development);
– Water resources (population with access to safe
water, intensity of freshwater use, percentage of
annual available resources used);
– Biodiversity (nationally protected area as a
percentage of total land);
– Energy use (GDP per unit of energy use, total and per
capita carbon dioxide emissions).
• Economic Standard economic indicators include
total and per capita GDP, gross national product
(GNP), national debt, employment rates, investment
rates, new housing starts, Dow Jones or other stock
market averages, balance of trade, etc.
• Social Social indicators include poverty, education,
and health, usually in the context of setting goals
such as:
– reducing poverty by half (a headcount of people with
less than $1/day equivalent income, a share of income
accruing to the poorest 20%, incidence of child
malnutrition);
– providing universal primary education (net primary
enrollment rate, progression to grade 5, literacy rate of
15- to 24-year-olds);
– improving gender equality in education (gender
differences in education andliteracy);
– reducing infant and child mortality (infant mortality
rate, under-5 mortality rate);
– reducing maternal mortality (maternal mortality
ratio, births attended by
health staff);
– expanding access to reproductive health
services (contraceptive prevalence
rate, total fertility rate, HIV prevalence in
pregnant 15- to 24-year-olds).

On first inspection, it might appear that only the

above indicators specifically focused on
improved energy use, productivity, and reduced
carbon dioxide emissions are concerned with
energy.
• However, it is essential to realize that the role of energy
in sustainable progress is far more pervasive. In
particular, energy is a major enabling force for many of
the above indicators.
• Electricity availability is key to facilitating education, to
providing health care services, and to providing an
infrastructure for commercial and industrial
development.
• Transportation services worldwide are heavily
dependent on petroleum availability.
• And, as energy services become widely available in
developing countries and living standards improve,
longevity increases and infant mortality rates drop,
causing initial increases in population.
• Eventually, birth rates are observed to adjust, helping
to stabilize population.
• Affordable and accessible energy has historically been
a major engine of economic progress.
• In contrast, persistent poverty is a guaranteed
roadblock to environmental stewardship.
 Key energy stakeholders
• Stakeholder is any person or group who
affects or is affected by the actions of an
energy policy/decision.
– Utilities (Energy producers, transporters &
distributors)
– Public Utility Commissions
– environmental advocacy groups
– consumer advocacy groups
– utility customers
– electricity generators
– energy technology industry.
Energy Efficiency and Conservation
• Energy Conservation is the prevention of the
wasteful use of energy, especially in order to ensure
its continuing availability.

• Energy efficiency is the use of less energy to perform

the same task or produce the same result.

• Energy Management is the process of tracking and

optimizing energy consumption to conserve usage

• Energy Audit is defined as an inspection or survey

analysis of energy flows in a structure, in a process
or in a system, intended to reduce the amount of
energy input without negatively affecting the outputs
Energy Efficiency and Conservation
• Reducing energy consumption through efficiency
and conservation provides the most important and
economically strategic projects for transition to a
sustainable energy system
• According to the World Energy Assessment by the
United Nations Development Programme in 2004, a
reduction of 25%–35% in primary energy in the
industrialized countries is achievable (cost-
effectively) over a 20-year period, without sacrificing
the level of energy services
• similar reductions of up to 40% are cost-effectively
achievable in the transitional economies and more
than 45% in developing economies
• As a combined result of efficiency improvements and
structural changes such as increased recycling,
substitution of energy-intensive materials, etc., energy
intensity could decline at a rate of 2.5% per year over the
next 20 years.

• Major areas of energy conservation and efficiency

improvement
– Energy End-Use Demand Reduction in Buildings
– Energy End-Use Demand Reduction in Transportation
– Energy Management in Industry
– Energy Management in Manufacturing