Ural Federal University – Yekaterinburg
February 24 – 27 , 2015
Sustainability in energy production
Prof. Giuseppe Genon, ing. Deborah Panepinto, ing. Francesca Viggiano, Politecnico di Torino
Scenarios for energetic production
The production of energy in electrical, mechanical or thermal forms uses for a substantial part, now and also in the medium-period future, thermal systems. In this connection, the starting point for evaluations of future needs is constituted by the construction of scenarios of energy consumption, and identification of the different conventional or innovative fuels that can be used in order to satisfy the requirements.
The identification of the human needs, in term of mechanical energy for transport and movement of goods, thermal energy for houses or for industrial use, electrical energy for private or public consumptions is commonly conducted on the basis of the hypothesis of growth of population, economic development, life styles, efficiency levels in energy exploitation. In this connection different scenarios evaluated from international consolidated agencies (IEA, EU, FAO, UN) can be considered, and used to define the future needs for different geographical areas.
Fig. 1 - Energy scenarios (International Energy Agency 2008)
The type of fuel that can be used in order to satisfy these needs (conventional as carbon or biomass, innovative as biodiesel or waste) must be evaluated from the point of view of distribution and possibility of extraction, potential scenarios of exhaustion or improvement in obtention, production cost, technology that can be used for energetic utilization, efficiency in energy production. From the other side, the use of different fuels leads to different consequences as concerns the potential environmental impact with reference to carbon balance, climate change and connection with GHG emission, local atmospheric impact, generation of solid residuals destinated to valorization or more frequently to disposal.
Other aspects that must be carefully considered in the preliminary evaluation of scenarios of thermal energy production are needs of pre-treatment for modification of natural original materials destinated to improve the suitability for use as fuels, technological solutions that can be used to extract from the fuel the maximum of energy with the highest levels of reliability, in account also of scale of exploitation and geographical areas of energy production and use, aspects connected with the transformation of energy in different forms, efficiency that can be obtained in these operations, possibility to integral utilization of the produced energy, territorial analysis of potential users destinated to establish the schemes of energy distribution.
Fig. 2 – Energy production schemes
These general aspects of energy production and use are presented with reference to well established scenarios of energetic planning, and a first level discussion concerning the economic, social, environmental, planning consequences of different choices will be introduced: the geographical reference framework for assessment can the global world market for the development aspects, the European area for discussion of most emerging technologies and highest attention to environmental aspects, the strict local interest area of a municipality or a province for the strict local planning decisions.