progressX

2018-11-18 Per 05.11.2018 wurde die Entwicklung des IMMO EM EMA - eine MS-Office-basierte Anwendung für E nergie MA nagement in kommunalem Gebäudebestand - mit Version 1.0 erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Die Anwendung besteht grundsätzlich aus 3 Bausteinen und ist flexibel erweiterbar: Panel ( EM panel) Datencontainer ( EM data) KooK(R)-Diagramm ( EM kook) Diese Bausteine werden in der aktuellen Version um die Bausteine Standortlogbücher ( EM log) Energietelegramm ( EM telegramm) ergänzt. Das IMMO EM EMA dockt unmittelbar an das IMMO EM EMO - den darunterliegenden Energiemonitor (ein Add-on des mst-Portals) an und bezieht sämtliche Energiedaten aus diesem Monitor. EM panel Auf dem Panel werden zum einen die wichtigsten Information, wie z.B. Zusammenstellung Energieträger Anzahl Messeinrichtungen Energieverbrauch pro Portfolio Zusammenstellung des Portfolio (nach Energiebezugsfläche sowie nach Anzahl und Art Objekt) übersichtlich dargestellt. Anderseits dient d...

a reprint from ETH News , 2018-11-14 Die Schweiz wird trockener, heisser, schneeärmer und kämpft künftig mit heftigeren Niederschlägen – zu diesem Ergebnis kommen Klimaforschende von MeteoSchweiz und der ETH Zürich. Heute präsentierten sie die im Auftrag des Bundes erstellten Klimaszenarien CH2018. Sie bilden die Basis für die Anpassungsstrategie des Bundes an den Klimawandel. Gemüsebauern bewässern die trockenen Böden, Tropennächte rauben Menschen den Schlaf und Hausbesitzer kämpfen mit Überschwemmungen. Eine Zukunft, die gemäss den Resultaten der Klimaszenarien bei ungebremstem Klimawandel absehbar ist. Bereits heute ist es wärmer als früher in unserem Land. «Wir müssen uns auf die Klimaveränderungen einstellen und uns anpassen», weiss Andreas Fischer, Projektleiter der Klimaszenarien CH2018 bei MeteoSchweiz. Künftig noch höhere Temperaturen Die neuen Szenarien bestätigen und erweitern das bisher bekannte Bild des Klimawandels. Sie zeigen vier Hauptveränderunge...

a reprint from triplepundit , 2018-10-25 Renewable energy funds are on the rise, seeking to match profits with a commitment to sustainability. These funds invest not only in generators of solar and wind power and their suppliers, but also in manufacturers of LED light bulbs, electric cars and automobile batteries. Stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are jumping on the bandwagon—from big players like Fidelity Investments and its  Select Environment and Alternative Energy Portfolio to smaller ones that have been at it for decades, such as the  New Alternatives Fund . The fact that major companies like Facebook, with its pledge to power global operations with 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, are going in big for renewables sweetens the financial prospect for investors. Electricity sector leads the way in renewable energy investment According to the International Energy Agency’s latest market forecast , renewables will continue their ex...

a reprint from Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft , 2018-10-17 Seit 2008 hat sich der Strommarkt stark verändert. Getrieben wird diese Entwicklung vom technologischen Fortschritt bei der erneuerbaren Stromproduktion und den digitalen Technologien, der Preisentwicklung der fossilen Energien und des CO2 sowie von neuen energie- und klimapolitischen Zielen der Schweiz und ihrer europäischen Nachbarn. Der Bundesrat hat vor diesem Hintergrund entschieden, für den Schweizer Strommarkt neue Rahmenbedingungen zu schaffen. Er hat an seiner Sitzung vom 17. Oktober 2018 dazu die Revision des Stromversorgungsgesetzes (StromVG) in die Vernehmlassung gegeben. Im Zentrum stehen die Versorgungssicherheit, ein effizient funktionierender, offener Markt sowie neue Netzregulierungen, die den Ausbau der dezentralen, erneuerbaren Stromproduktion unterstützen sollen. Die Vernehmlassung dauert bis am 31. Januar 2019. D...

a reprint from phys.org , 2018-07-02 Greenhouse gases were the main driver of climate throughout the warmest period of the past 66 million years, providing insight into the drivers behind long-term climate change. Antarctica and Australia separated around the end of the Eocene (56 to 22.9 million years ago), creating a deep water passage between them and changing ocean circulation patterns. Some researchers believe these changes were the driver of cooling temperatures near the end of the Eocene 'hothouse' period, but some think declining levels of carbon dioxide were to blame. If the cooling had been caused by changes in ocean circulation, regions around the equator would have warmed as the polar regions cooled, shifting the distribution of heat on Earth. But changing the concentration of greenhouse gases would affect the total heat trapped in Earth's atmosphere, causing cooling everywhere (including in the tropics), which is what the researchers found. The findings ...

a reprint from the economist , 2018-06-25 A LITTLE over a decade ago, when JinkoSolar, a Shanghai-based company, entered the solar business, it was such a novice that when it visited international trade fairs, all it had was a bare table and a board with its name scribbled on it. But it also had luck, a technological edge and lots of public money on its side. The industry globally was riding high on subsidies. Generous feed-in-tariffs (FITs), financial incentives for installing solar, made Germany the world’s largest solar market by around 2010. Germans turned to China for cheap sources of crystalline silicon solar panels, not least because subsidised land and loans enabled China’s fledgling manufacturers to undercut European and American competitors. When European solar subsidies slumped during the euro crisis, the Chinese government once again stepped in to support its renewable-energy champions. It offered FITs to slather the remote west of China with solar farms. By 2013 C...

a reprint from IEA , 2018-06-16 Fossil fuels currently play a critical role in industry, not only as sources of energy, but also of feedstocks and process agents. Clean electricity could provide a sustainable alternative , but hurdles remain – particularly in terms of costs. In Northern Europe, offshore wind is showing potential to provide significant amounts of clean power to industry, with generation costs possibly falling to the range of €55 to € 70/MWh. This increasingly affordable renewable electricity strengthens the potential for cost-effective replacement of fossil fuels by electricity in industry. However, the continuing cost gap with the direct use of gas or coal to generate heat limits this potential to those electric technologies that are at least twice as efficient as fossil fuel uses. For now, a complete shift would require carbon prices at levels up to € 150 per tonne, a level even higher than projected for 2040 in the World Energy Outlook Sustai...

a reprint from The Guardian , 2018-06-16 The world is on track to exceed 1.5C of warming unless countries rapidly implement “far-reaching” actions to reduce carbon emissions, according to a draft UN report leaked to Reuters . The final draft report from the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) was due for publication in October. It is the guiding scientific document for what countries must do to combat climate change. Human-induced warming would exceed 1.5C by about 2040 if emissions continued at their present rate, the report found, but countries could keep warming below that level if they made “rapid and far-reaching” changes. Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, almost 200 countries signed up to limit global temperature rises to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C. Climate scientist and Climate Analytics director Bill Hare said the draft report showed with greater clarity ...

a reprint from pv magazine While we’ve seen prices for solar power installations globally fall well below one U.S. dollar per watt, it was only relatively recently (later in 2016, early 2017) that those prices were seen in the United States. And with the effects of tariffs on imported solar panels under Section 201, there are some projects that might have been under that number that won’t come to be – yet. GTM Research did the math as part of a presentation by Research Manager Scott Moskowitz at GTM’s Solar Summit,  Trends in Solar Technology and System Prices,  which projects that utility scale fixed-tilt systems could reach 70 U.S. cents per watt by 2022. It should be noted that the Section 201 tariff is scheduled to end in early 2022, and that to qualify for the 22% Solar Investment Tax Credit (the last year before it goes to 10% indefinitely) you must break ground in 2021 and complete the project before the end of 2023. GTM Research projects savings from a range...

  reprint Japan anticipates that by 2030 clean energy such as solar and hydro will generate slightly more of the nation’s electricity than nuclear power plants . _progress | M replaces _kt75 | mirror. visit: http://progress-m.blogspot.com . ready: 01.07.2015. close ✕ Clean energy sources will supply as much as 24 percent of Japan’s electricity in 15 years, while atomic power will account for as much as 22 percent, according to a draft report from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on what Japan’s electricity mix should look like by 2030. Though the eagerly-awaited report — the result of months of study by a ministry panel debating the electricity mix — continues to see a need for nuclear , the draft proposes a diminished role compared with before the Fukushima disaster of March 2011. Nuclear power accounted for more than a quarter of Japan’s electricity generation before the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors. Even the 22 percent level is doubtful for a n...

  reprint Japan anticipates that by 2030 clean energy such as solar and hydro will generate slightly more of the nation’s electricity than nuclear power plants . Clean energy sources will supply as much as 24 percent of Japan’s electricity in 15 years, while atomic power will account for as much as 22 percent, according to a draft report from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on what Japan’s electricity mix should look like by 2030. Though the eagerly-awaited report — the result of months of study by a ministry panel debating the electricity mix — continues to see a need for nuclear , the draft proposes a diminished role compared with before the Fukushima disaster of March 2011. Nuclear power accounted for more than a quarter of Japan’s electricity generation before the meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors. Even the 22 percent level is doubtful for a nation with one of the world’s oldest nuclear fleets and where the majority of the public has opposed atomic genera...

reprint UPDATE -- The debate about the future use of coal to generate power gathered steam in Germany after the country recently saw greenhouse gas emissions rise. The government’s Climate Action Programme foresees additional emission cuts from the power sector and the federal grid planning agency now assumes there will be one third less coal in the power mix in the future. By summer 2015, the Ministry for Energy wants to present legislation that specifies how and when coal power generation has to be limited. Power generation from coal has long served German industry, and despite Germany’s reputation as an ecological role model, the cheap, carbon-intensive, fossil fuel has recently seen a revival. After many scientists, activists and politicians, including the Environment Minister, warned that Germany would miss its target of cutting CO2 by 40 percent by 2020 (over 1990), the government adopted a plan to cut the share of coal in the mix . The Climate Action Programme stipulates that ...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Denmark, a tiny country on the northern fringe of Europe, is pursuing the world’s most ambitious policy against climate change. It aims to end the burning of fossil fuels in any form by 2050 — not just in electricity production, as some other countries hope to do, but in transportation as well. Now a question is coming into focus: Can Denmark keep the lights on as it chases that lofty goal? Let anyone consider such a sweeping transition to be impossible in principle, the Danes beg to differ. They essentially invented the modern wind-power industry, and have pursued it more avidly than any country. They are above 40 percent renewable power on their electric grid , aiming toward 50 percent by 2020. The political consensus here to keep pushing is all but unanimous. Their policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing wind and solar p...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here _Experts expect global warming to have a negative impact on crop yields, but shortages of water for irrigation could make for double the trouble, according to a study published yesterday. As described in ScienceDaily, “given the present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural models estimate that climate change will directly reduce food production from maize, soybeans, wheat and rice by as much as 43 percent by the end of the 21st century. But hydrological models looking at the effect of warming climate on freshwater supplies project further agricultural losses, due to the reversion of 20 to 60 million hectares of currently irrigated fields back to rain-fed crops.” The study’s lead author, Joshua Elliot, said the analysis is the first of its kind to feature an in-depth comparison of agricultural and hydrological models, which resulted in dramatically d...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Beijing brings forward deadline for world's first thorium-fuelled facility in attempt to break reliance on fossil fuels. China is developing a new design of nuclear power plant in an attempt to reduce its reliance on coal and to cut air pollution. In an effort to reduce the number of coal-fired plants, the Chinese government has brought forward by 15 years the deadline to develop a nuclear power plant using the radioactive element thorium instead of uranium. A team of researchers in Shanghai has now been told it has 10 instead of 25 years to develop the world's first such plant. "In the past, the government was interested in nuclear power because of the energy shortage . Now, they are more interested because of smog," Professor Li Zhong, a scientist working on the project, told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. An advanced research centre was set up in January by the Chinese Academy of Sciences with the aim of developing an i...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Inside Sustainability: Facts, Figures, Bullshit - Part II: Alternative Energy The European Union should ensure that future climate and energy policies do not undermine the competitiveness of its industry, already weakened by a price gap with the U.S., the bloc’s member states said. Energy ministers from the EU’s 28 nations had their first debate about 2030 carbon-reduction andrenewable energy strategy at their quarterly meeting in Brussels today. It followed yesterday’s gathering of environment ministers, where countries differed over how ambitious Europe’s emissions-cut target should be and how fast new policies should be adopted. The framework for the next decade will next be discussed by EU leaders at their March 20-21 summit. “We need to make sure we combine our objectives for setting ambitious goals with increasing competitveness of the industry and safeguarding energy supply,” Greek Energy Minister Yann...