Ana - Environmental Management Flashcards
What’s the great acceleration?
Part of the most recent period of the “Antropocene” era where the rate of impact of human activity on the planet is greatly increasing.
This is greatly led by the industrial revolution and a range of different industrial sectors.
What are the planetary boundaries?
Name all 9?
A framework for identifying and quantifying several (9) factors that influence our environment and assessing their risk.
The measures are:
- climate change
- novel entities
- stratospheric ozone depletion
- atmospheric ozone loading
- ocean acidification
- biogeochemical flows
- freshwater use
- land-system change
- biosphere integrity
What’s the nitrogen cycle?
The biogeochemical cycle where N2 is converted into multiple chemical forms as it circles amongst the atmosphere, terrestrial, and marine ecosystems.
We are currently producing more N2 than consuming/breaking down. This is leading to issues inc,using eutrophication.
What’s the Haber-Bosch process?
The process by which hydrogen and nitrogen are used to produce ammonia. The ammonia is used in fertilisers.
This is a driving force behind the “green revolution”.
However, excess nitrogen puts a burden on the natural nitrogen cycle as the rate of production of ammonia is far greater than that of the rate of nitrification (NH4 to NO3)
What are ecosystem services?
Regenerative, cycling processes occurring in ecosystems that mitigate the impact of human activity and sustain it with vital resources.
What is the industrial revolution?
Defined as “The transition from an agrarian economy to an economy based on the use of coal-fired machinery to manufacture an increasingly wide range of goods.
The process began in Britain in the
18th century after the invention of the steam engine. It progressed rapidly throughout the 19th
century and extended to the rest of western Europe, the United States, and Japan, then to the former
Soviet Union.
What is the definition of sustainability?
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
How does the EU define the precautionary principle?
The precautionary principle applies where scientific evidence is insufficient, inconclusive or uncertain and preliminary scientific evaluation indicates that there are reasonable grounds for concern that the potentially dangerous effects on the environment, human, animal or plant health may be inconsistent with the high level of protection chosen by the EU.
What is the green revolution?
The Green Revolution is the set of research technology transfer initiatives that increased agricultural production in parts of the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.
What are ecosystem services?
Several regenerative, cycling processes taking place in ecosystems and that mitigate the impact of human activity and sustain it with vital resources.
Mitigation comes with buffering and remediating some of the negative impacts of pollution, for example, water bodies such as lakes and rivers, and the associated riverbanks, sediments and vegetation are often able to treat, retain or absorb a certain level of anthropogenic pollution, such as heavy metals from mining activities for example or nutrients from intensive agriculture.
What are incremental innovations?
Evolutionary innovations (also known as Incremental Innovation, continuous or dynamic evolutionary innovation) that are brought about by many incremental advances in technology or processes. (E.g. updates and modifications with each new iPhone).
What are disruptive innovations?
Revolutionary innovations (also called discontinuous innovations or disruptive innovations) are often disruptive and new. (E.g. how digital music download has replaced CDs)
What are some challenges regarding the definition of sustainability?
Definition 1) Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
Definition 2) An obligation to conduct ourselves so that we leave the future the option or the capacity to be as well off as we are.
Some of the challenges have been that traditionally these definitions have mostly been applied to materials and resource sustainability. However, there is growing trends that also the notion of social and economic sustainability must be considered.
What type of business models should we develop?
What should the notion of “growth” and prosperity be? Is a notion of economic growth enough and is that sustainable? What about social sustainability that addresses links between poverty, education, public health, sanitation, and well-being?
In a thermal power plant: what sorts of energy are produced and converted?
We go from Chemical Energy, in the form of fuel or radioactive compounds, to thermal energy (superheated steam) to mechanical energy (rotation of a turbine) and then converted through an alternator to electrical energy that can be distributed.
What are the key drivers for energy demand?
Population growth
Economic growth
Consumer behaviour
It is important to remember where is the demand coming from and roughly what percentages does each sector represent. As a rule of thumb you have 30-30-30 between Industry, Housing and Transport.
What are the key drivers for energy supply?
Energy security Affordability Sustainability Energy safety Public perception
What is primary energy supply?
The energy production plus energy imports, minus energy exports, minus international bunkers, then plus or minus stock changes.
These energy sources have not been converted into their final form and therefore conversion efficiencies have not been considered.
What is total consumption, regarding energy supply and demand?
The energy source in its final form used in economic activities such as transport, heating.
How is the energy market predicted to change by 2040?
Under its stated policies scenario, the IEA forecasts that growth in renewables will continue — led by hydro, wind and solar power — but the pace won’t be fast enough to offset the effects of expanding global economies and a growing worldwide population. Energy demand will rise by 1% annually through 2040, and while emission levels will slow, they won’t peak until after 2040.
Most of the projections do not predict a true transition away from carbon-based fuels through the use of renewable energy by 2040.
What are some of the low-carbon energy technologies we have at our disposal?
Bioenergy Wind energy Geothermal Nuclear Hydropower Fuel cells Tidal Solar Shale gas
What does LCOE stand for?
Levelized Cost of Electricity
What is the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE)
The Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is the discounted lifetime cost of building and operating a generation asset, expressed as a cost per unit of electricity generated (£/MWh).
It covers all relevant costs faced by the generator, including pre-development, capital, operating, fuel and financing costs.
LCOE (levelised cost of energy) is calculated by accounting for all of a system’s expected lifetime costs (including construction, financing, fuel, maintenance, taxes, insurance and incentives), which are then divided by the system’s lifetime expected power output (kWh).
All cost and benefit estimates are adjusted for inflation and discounted to account for the time-value of money.
What must be considered when examining energy efficiency?
Energy efficiency is a trade-off between investment costs and energy gains (Return of Investment = ROI).
Implementing energy efficient technologies or low-carbon technologies is not always a straightforward decision or the most obvious one since there won’t always be an immediate ROI or that return might not be economic but rather environmental and therefore not (yet) monetized.
What is energy storage and what parameters must be considered regarding this?
Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy production.
Storage capacity
Energy available
Discharge time
Efficiency
Durability (the number of times the device can release energy)
Autonomy (amount of time for which the device can continuously release energy)
What are the 2 main classifications of energy storage?
Direct (e.g. magnetic or electric storage)
Indirect (e.g. artificial reservoirs (batteries) or natural reservoirs)
What is a flywheel?
A mechanical device which uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy; a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed.
What is an SMES?
Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage.
(SMES) systems store energy in the magnetic field created by the flow of direct current in a superconducting coil which has been cryogenically cooled to a temperature below its superconducting critical temperature.
What is an electrical grid?
How does it differ to a smart grid?
An electrical grid is the sum of all the elements such as transmission lines, energy supply stations, substations, transformers etc.
It produces, transports, manages and delivers energy from a source to a customer, either domestic or industrial. The first grids were easier to manage, often local or regional.
There would be one power source that served the region and the consumption wasn’t as high or as diversified as today.
Nowadays, there are multiple energy sources, many different technologies, diverse demands depending on the industrialisation of regions or urbanisation and grids are integrated at a National if not at International level.
Smart grids use digital technology including controls, computers, automation and sensors to connect the different elements in the grid to respond digitally to our quickly changing electric demand.
What is interoperability?
How does this concept improve system efficiency and low carbon energy supply?
Interoperability is the capacity of all the different parts to work together, communicate and influence each other.
This concept improves system efficiency and low carbon energy supply by:
• Integrating renewable energy sources (as well as micro-generation)
• Better matching supply with demand
• Allowing and managing multiple entry points into the grid
• Better managing consumer use of energy
• Diverting energy production to where it is most efficient according to weather conditions
• Regulating storage and energy production
