The Potential of Small, Low-carbon, Zero-energy Housing: A Multidimensional Approach

This thesis examines the potential of small, low-carbon, (near) zero-energy dwellings as a solution that would both address sustainability challenges and answer to the growing housing shortage in North-West Europe. It adopts a multidimensional outlook that encompasses institutional, social and technical aspects surrounding the dwellings. The...

A critical assessment and summary on the low carbon energy pile technologies based on the life-cycle perspective: Challenges and prospects

Energy piles, a technology integrating the heat exchange component within building pile foundations for shallow geothermal energy utilization, have proven economically efficient. They outperform conventional ground source heat pumps by mitigating additional borehole costs and space requirements. This paper systematically examines low-carbon...

From circular strategies to actions: 65 European circular building cases and their decarbonisation potential

The application of the circular economy (CE) in the building industry is critical for achieving the carbon reduction goals defined in the Paris Agreement and is increasingly promoted through European policies. In recent years, CE strategies have been applied and tested in numerous building projects in practice. However, insights into their...

Exploring the emergence of waste recovery and exchange in industrial clusters

Self-organized industrial symbiosis (IS) starts with one actor's decision to invest in a waste recovery plant and the other actors' decision to buy the recovered flow. Technical and institutional conditions of the cluster influence actors' decisions. This paper explores the emergence of IS collaborations in industrial clusters under different...

The estimation of carbon imbalance and driving factors in China's urban residential building sector

Understanding the imbalance of carbon emissions in the urban residential building (URB) sector is beneficial for equitable and effective emission reduction policies. However, carbon imbalance in URB and its major driving factors remain unclear. Therefore, according to the Kaya identity and Zenga index, this study aims to analyze the imbalance...

The influence of environmental concerns and psychosocial factors on electric motorbike switching intention in the global south

Motorcycle riding is the principal mode of travel in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Motorcycle-based transport is regarded as highly problematic today due to reliance on fossil-based fuels, which contributes to climate change. Additionally, emissions from fuel combustion release air pollutants in urban areas, resulting in public...

Towards fossil free cities – Emission assessment of food and resources consumption with the FEWprint carbon accounting platform

Current urbanization rates concentrate the ever growing demand for food, energy and water (FEW) resources particularly in cities, making them one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The FEW nexus integrative approach offers a potential framework for sustainable resource management in cities. However, existing nexus evaluation...

Gravity center change of carbon emissions in Chinese residential building sector: Differences between urban and rural area

In China, dynamic spatial–temporal evolution and urban–rural gap in carbon emissions of residential building sector are crucial for understanding the current state, which is faced with great challenges related to emission mitigation. To overcome the challenge, this study employed the gravity center model to explore spatial–temporal evolution...

Environmentally sustainable development and use of artificial intelligence in health care

Artificial intelligence (AI) can transform health care by delivering medical services to underserved areas, while also filling gaps in health care provider availability. However, AI may also lead to patient harm due to fatal glitches in robotic surgery, bias in diagnosis, or dangerous recommendations. Despite concerns ethicists have identified...

Make your home carbon-free. An open access planning tool to calculate energy-related carbon emissions in districts and dwellings

Reducing the carbon emissions of buildings and whole districts is one of the main objectives of sustainable development goals. Both policymakers and end-users need reliable information to take actions that lead to achieving those goals. For this, an innovative open access planning tool has been developed to assess the effect of energy...

Reducing committed emissions of heating towards 2050: Analysis of scenarios for the insulation of buildings and the decarbonisation of electricity generation

Infrastructure for heat provision in the built environment needs to change remarkably to support lowering carbon emissions and achieving climate mitigation targets before 2050. We propose a computational approach for finding a mix of heat options per neighbourhood that minimises cumulative carbon emissions between 2030 and 2050, referred to as...

Unaccounted CO₂ leaks downstream of a large tropical hydroelectric reservoir

Recent studies show that tropical hydroelectric reservoirs may be responsible for substantial greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, yet emissions from the surface of released water downstream of the dam are poorly characterized if not neglected entirely from most assessments. We found that carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission...

Cost-effectiveness of decarbonisation options for the vegetable-oil and -fat industry in the Netherlands

There is significant emission reduction potential in the Dutch vegetable oil and fat industry, which consists of seven companies each producing more than 10 kt CO2 per year, emitting a total of 0.36 Mt CO2 in 2018. Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) curves are constructed to provide an overview of the most cost-effective decarbonisation options. Both...

Development of a user-friendly regression model to evaluate carbon emissions of office buildings design in the subtropics

Purpose: Design teams have difficulties in assessing building carbon emissions at an early stage, as most building energy simulation tools require a detailed input of building design for estimation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a user-friendly regression model to estimate carbon emissions of the preliminary design of office...

Exploring carbon futures in the EU power sector: Using Exploratory System Dynamics Modelling and Analysis to explore policy regimes under deep uncertainty

The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in combination with other renewable electricity (RES-E) support schemes such as (premium) feed-in tariffs or tradable green certificates do not guarantee a carbon neutral power sector in 2050. This paper shows that many plausible futures of high carbon emissions exist when no substantial efficiency...

Adaptive Policy Design to Reduce Carbon Emissions: A System-of-Systems Perspective

This paper presents an adaptive policy design approach based on a system-of-systems (SoS) perspective. Using a case of carbon emissions reduction in the residential sector, the SoS perspective is used as a way to structure the policy issue into interdependent relevant systems. This representation of the system provides a framework to test a...

On the Impact of CO2 Emission-Trading on Power Generation Emissions

Under the Kyoto Protocol, governments agreed on and accepted CO2 reduction targets in order to counter climate change. In Europe one of the main policy instruments to meet the agreed reduction targets is CO2 emission-trading (CET), which was implemented as of January 2005. In this system, companies active in specific sectors must be in the...