Save Energy Project

SAVE ENERGY is an European Project (CIP-ICT-PSP-238882 PROJECT) that will address the challenge of behaviour transformation through the use of ICT (information communication technologies) as an enabler of energy efficiency in five Public building in five European cities – Helsinki, Leiden, Lisbon, Luleå and Manchester.

The Lisbon public building is located in Entrecampos.

The building was completed in the nineties and it is a concrete frame, multi-storey building, with high proportion of glazing in the building envelope, very much like most office buildings in Lisbon. It is constituted by 6 building volumes, all interconnected with a total area above the ground of 28.000 sqm; total area under the ground: 17.000 sqm and useful area for working places: 18.000 sqm.

The Lisbon project has a blog.

Portuguese government to measure government buildings electricity consumption?

According to an article (in portuguese) from Público the portuguese government should start measuring electricity consumption in all government buildings.

This is a proposal from the socialist party (in government) that recommends the government and all public organs to post on the internet electricity consumption and energy efficiency and reduction plans. Some municipalities in Portugal have energy agencies that are presently doing a great job on awareness and energy efficiency and electricity consumption reduction (check E-Nova, the Lisbon agency on energy and environment, Areana Tejo, Oeinerge).

“O Estado é seguramente o maior consumidor energético em Portugal, e tem por isso de haver uma maior fiscalização sobre o seu consumo, para que tenha um comportamento exemplar”, disse Duarte Cordeiro [deputado do PS] em declarações à Lusa.

Earth Hour or everyday actions?

Earth Hour is an initiative by WWF that happens
on the last Saturday of March annually and consists of households and businesses turning off their non essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour. The goal is to help fighting climate change.

But what is the real impact of this Earth Hour?
According to what I have read, it is little and it could cause problems to the electricity supply such as grid failures, outages and blackouts. The load reduction of a massive light and electricity turn off could cause problems, because the baseline of non-renewables, dams and nuclear that provide security in supply would shut down and need to be restarted.

An interesting discussion about the Earth hour side effects.
Comparison with candles on Earth hour stupidity.

Carpooling and Carpool Clubs: Clarifying Concepts and Assessing Value Enhancement Possibilities

Carpooling and Carpool Clubs: Clarifying Concepts and Assessing Value Enhancement Possibilities is a project by Gonçalo Correia about the alternative measure for mobility management Carpooling (individuals sharing their cars with friends and/or strangers).

In theory, these systems could lead to great reductions in the use of private vehicles; however, in practice they have been obtaining limited success for two main reasons: the psychological barriers associated with riding with strangers and schedule differences. Based in findings from previous research, we proposed in
this dissertation a carpooling club model which aims in overcoming these barriers and expand carpooling for regional levels, through two main aspects: establishing a base trust level for carpoolers to find compatible matches for traditional groups, and at the same time allowing to search for a ride in an alternative group when a near term trip appears.

This project is applied to the Metropolitan Lisbon Area.

EDP data on electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions

Yesterday I was searching for some data about electricity production and greenhouse gas emissions and I found this site from EDP (in Portuguese).

The only downsize of the data is that CO2 does not have units. Is it kg?

GWh emitted

Interview with Bjorn Lomborg in the Ecologist

The Ecologist published an interview with Bjorn Lomborg.
Lomborg has become famous for publishing The Skeptical Environmentalist. He thinks that tackling climate change is very costly. So, we should first focus on the increase of people's well being, on combating disease (irradicate HIV and malaria) and on investing in research and development to reduce the price of renewables.

TL: What in your opinion is a safe level of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere?

BL: The safe level, if there was no consideration of cost, would be pre-industrial levels. But you can’t talk about safe levels without talking about cost.

Traffic accidents are the second biggest killer worldwide. More than one million entirely man-made and preventable deaths. We could cut them all by cutting car speed limits to 5 Mph. But we are not going to do that because people would rather get home quicker and then kill some people. You don’t want to say it that way but that is the effect of what we’re deciding.

We don’t have the discussion about safe levels of traffic speeds without talking about the downside of the debate. We need that discussion on climate. How much are the economic models telling us it will cost to cut back and how much for not cutting back?

TL: So what is your solution?

BL: The problem we are seeing with global warming is that everyone has been saying for the last 18 years that we need to cut carbon emissions. Right now we are not succeeding because it costs too much and the benefits are not going to felt until 100 years from now.

So instead of trying to put expensive solar panels up that look good but don’t achieve much we should be focused on trying to make solar panels much cheaper.

If we could make them cheaper than fossil fuels by say 2040 we would have solved global warming because everyone; the Chinese, Indians would buy them not because they are green but because they are cheaper.

My point is that instead of trying to cut [emissions] directly - which economically seems a poor strategy and politically seems infeasible - a much better idea is to invest in research and development. By making green energy cheaper in the long run you will end up cutting much much more carbon emissions.

The EU Sustainable Energy Week

The EU Sustainable Energy Week is an initiative happening in the week of 22 to 26 March 2010

Sustainable Energy Europe is the European Union’s campaign to raise awareness of intelligent energy supply and end-use. Since 2007 the campaign has hosted a week-long event called “European Union Sustainable Energy Week.” Comprised of more than 200 events throughout Europe, bringing together representatives from the many sectors dedicated to improving sustainable energy, the Week also gives rise to many news announcements and story opportunities.

Patrick Lambert, Director of the Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation

Find out the energy events in your country

Check the events in Portugal:
23 March

25 March

26 March

IEA energy efficiency page

IEA has a new page dedicated to energy efficiency.

Portuguese Energy Strategy 2020

The Portuguese Energy Strategy for 2020 was presented yesterday.
The strategy has three key ideas:
1. Promoting renewable energies and endogenous resources to create employment;
2. Reducing external dependency;
3. Sustainability and climate change.

The budget is 31 thousand million euros and 130 to 140 thousand jobs will be created until 2020.

Official government press release (in portuguese)
Interview with the Economy Minister (in portuguese)
Energy and the Environment Associations (in portuguese)

Kyoto2, how to manage the global greenhouse, by Oliver Tickell

I'm reading the book Kyoto 2, by Oliver Tickell.
The Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and the author proposes a new mechanism for the post-Kyoto period (post 2012). This has yet to be defined. The Copenhagen Summit did not produce an agreement, just a letter of intentions. Everyone is expecting for the Mexico Summit.
Energy is a major contributor to climate change. What can be the role of energy efficiency in tackling climate change?

As efficiency improves, people or companies can use the same amount of energy to produce more services. This means that the cost of energy for any one service has fallen. This has two effects. The first is that money you would otherwise have spent on energy is released to do something else. The second is that as processes which use a lot of energy become more efficient, they look more financially attractive than they were before. So when you are deciding what to spend your extra money on, you will invest in more energy-intensive processes than you would otherwise have done. The extraordinary result is that, in a free market, energy efficiency could increase energy use.

This is the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate: increased energy efficiency paradoxically tends to lead to increased energy consumption.
The author also refers to a recent analysis by Nick Hanleya of raising energy efficiency in Scotland:

Making more with less intuitively seems to be good for the environment, and this is the presumption of the current UK policy. However, in a system-wide context, improvements in energy efficiency lower the cost of energy in efficiency units and may even stimulate the consumption and production of energy measured in physical units, and increase pollution. Simulations of a computable general equilibrium model of Scotland suggest that an across the board stimulus to energy efficiency there would actually stimulate energy production and consumption and lead to a deterioration in environmental indicators. The implication is that policies directed at stimulating energy efficiency are not, in themselves, sufficient to secure environment improvements: this may require the use of complementary energy policies designed to moderate incentives to increased energy consumption.

Energy TV (in portuguese)

Energy TV is an initiative from IDMEC, a research unit from IST that wants to promote sustainable energy use in Portugal.
The site is available in portuguese only.

EurObserv'ER - The Renewable Energy observatory

"Since 1998, The EurObserv'ER barometer measures the progress made by renewable energies in each sector and in each member State of the European Union in an as up-to-date way as possible (with figures less than 12 months old). EurObserv'ER produces a series of figure-backed indicators covering energetic, technological and economic dimensions."

Latest publication is the Wind Power Barometer.

The economics of transition in the power sector

IEA released a new report on the economics of transition in the power sector.
Electricity production has various environmental impacts, one of which greenhouse gas emissions. More efficient plants, carbon capture and storage and more restrictive control of emissions are some of the measures being used to change the situation. But these measures have risks associated.
The report identifies the importance of these risk factors in the economics of transition by illustrating the case of investment in the power sector. To a great extent, the transition to a lowcarbon power sector means dealing with coal plants, which is the largest contributor for greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 73% of global power sector CO2 emissions.

EU expects to meet 20% renewables target by 2020

According to the European Wind Energy Association, EU will meet or slightly exceed its 2020 target of 20% renewable energy production in the 27 Member States.
Portugal is on track to meet the target, which is 31% renewable energy share in 2020. In 2005, the share of renewable energy was 20.5%. Hydro power and wind will probably be the main renewable players.

For more information go to:
Energy Efficiency News
EWEA Summary of Forecast Documents Submitted by Member States