Environmental exergonomics for sustainable design and analysis of energy systems

Alexander Golberg

Energy, 2015, vol. 88, issue C, 314-321

Abstract: Exergy analysis methods place a major emphasis on technological and economical optimization of energy systems but have limited ability to address their environmental impacts. Although several approaches, such as Extended Exergy Accounting and Exergonomics, have been proposed to include pollution costs in the energy system optimization, environmental impacts of energy systems are much more complex, as energy systems affect the entire eco-systems services in the areas they are installed. Therefore, energy systems should minimize the adverse impacts on the surrounding eco-system services. In this paper we introduce a method for analysis and optimization of energy systems using technological, economic, and environmental exergy flows. For environmental exergy flow analysis, we included the eco-exergy component in the system objective function. Eco-exergy provides a Second Law derived measurement of the eco-system ability to do work. The disruption of eco-system services, such as reduction of biodiversity, is reflected in a reduction of eco-exergy. Therefore, we propose to include the minimization of the eco-exergy losses in the sustainable energy systems optimization. To demonstrate the method, we analyzed the eco-exergy losses associated with the reduction of the birds' biomass in the EU (European Union) fields dedicated to renewable energy systems. Specifically, we show that the EU renewable energy installations in 2008 lead to addition, today unaccountable, 5 PJ exergetic losses associated with the reduction in the biodiversity and biomass.

Keywords: Energy systems sustainability; Eco-exergy; Eco-system services; Exergonomics; Environmental impacts; Biodiversity; Bioenergy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544215006349
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:88:y:2015:i:c:p:314-321

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2015.05.053

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().