Environmental Impacts and Sustainability
Ensieh Ozgoli; Younes Noorollahi; Reza Arjmandi; Ali Mohammadi
Abstract
Climate change refers to any significant and long-term alterations in global or regional weather conditions. The impact of climate change on the industrial plans is enormous, while the water supply sector has been challenged to examine how it could continuously operate in the current situation. Optimization ...
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Climate change refers to any significant and long-term alterations in global or regional weather conditions. The impact of climate change on the industrial plans is enormous, while the water supply sector has been challenged to examine how it could continuously operate in the current situation. Optimization of energy consumption and reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions are some of the priorities of water companies. The objective of the study is to propose a novel evaluation approach to the feasibility of using renewable energies (solar, wind, and biomass) in the water and wastewater industry. Tehran Water and Wastewater Company consists of six regional districts and forecasting of its energy consumption, power costs, and carbon tax rates for the next ten years was done by using the regression model. The results indicated that increase in water supply and electricity consumption was evidenced by the increase in Tehran's annual population. GHG emissions were calculated in two scenarios, the first of which is based on the total supply of required electricity from conventional power plants and the second is on the generation of approximately one-third by renewable energies. In addition to the higher emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from diesel and oil power plants than the natural gas-fueled plants, by increasing the carbon tax to more than 30 USD per tonne of CO2, it is expected that the emissions will be reduced by 30 % in all fossil-fueled power plant types. Results showed that a small amount of tax was not effective in reducing GHG emissions.
Renewable Energy Economics, Policies and Planning
Younes Noorollahi; Fatemeh Pourghasem; Hossein Yousefi
Abstract
Baseline data represent one of the important stages of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure that describes the existing environment of the study area and surrounding areas in enough detail to allow the environmental impacts of the proposed area to be accurately and adequately assessed, and ...
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Baseline data represent one of the important stages of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure that describes the existing environment of the study area and surrounding areas in enough detail to allow the environmental impacts of the proposed area to be accurately and adequately assessed, and future changes and effects can be measured. Baseline data may be inaccurate, difficult to obtain or non-existent in Iran as a developing country, and it involves huge and diverse environmental data of a spatial nature in the EIA process. Therefore, a useful and effective geographic information system (GIS) approach is developed to integrate geodatabase by acquiring and handling environmental data from different sources related to the proposed project area for the EIA procedure. Based on this approach, a comprehensive geodatabase for baseline data of EIA procedure, called Baseline Geodatabase (BGDB), is designed. The BGDB includes feature datasets (projects, climatology and air quality, hydrology, pedology, general location map of the study area, geology, noise, biology, and socio-economic-cultural data) and tables (fauna). For example, the BGDB for Sabalan geothermal project area, Iran as a case study is developed. This paper provides a practical tool to facilitate the EIA process, environmentally sustainable management, and to support decision-making for environmental specialists and managers in the present and future of the proposed project area.
Mojtaba Tahani; Pouria Servati; Ahmad Hajinezhad; Younes Noorollahi; Emad Ziaee
Abstract
In recent years, energy predicament and environmental problems in the world caused by fossil fuels combustion make us to pay serious attention to optimizing energy consumption and using renewable energies. One of the potential renewable energies which can be helpful in electricity generation is harness ...
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In recent years, energy predicament and environmental problems in the world caused by fossil fuels combustion make us to pay serious attention to optimizing energy consumption and using renewable energies. One of the potential renewable energies which can be helpful in electricity generation is harness wind and water energy or using these two kinds of energy simultaneously. In this study, to provide a part of electricity in Azadi complex, 2 wind turbines with 12 different scenarios are used. In addition to provide some parts of the consumed electricity, they provide consumed electricity for water pumps which pump the sport complex lake water to a reservoir with 30000 cubic meters capacity and 20 meters height which provides remainder the consumed electricity. In this model, with regard to the uncertain amount of electricity consumption, 3consumption scenarios with three probabilities are pumped every day into a pool and a few of it is used for electricity consumption and the surplus is sold to the agricultural sector and irrigation of green spaces. The GAMS software and two stage optimization methods in two states, with and without considering the risk for optimization are used and in both states, profit and net profit in each scenario are computed.