Air pollution is a threat to the environment and human health. Freight trucking in particular is the main source of freight transportation emissions. Heavy-duty trucks emit large amounts of toxic air pollutants that cause serious diseases and harm public health. In addition, heavy-duty trucks emit great amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG), which is the leading cause of global warming. Despite increased environmental restrictions on air pollution and rising trucking greenhouse gas emissions in the past decades, no economic study has examined the potential GHG and air pollution reductions in the trucking sector and the associated private abatement costs to the industry. This study accounts for GHG emissions and toxic air pollutants in measuring and evaluating efficiency and productivity for the trucking industry in the 48 contiguous states. Moreover, the private costs of abatement to the industry were also estimated. When only GHG was incorporated in the production model, the results showed that each state could expand desirable output and reduce GHG by an average of 11 percent per year between 2000 and 2007. The Malmquist-Luenberger productivity indexes showed that omitting or ignoring GHG in trucking service production yielded biased estimates. On the other hand, due to increased environmental regulations, most of the toxic air pollutants decreased dramatically between 2002 and 2005. The analytical results showed that inefficiency decreased during this period. The private costs of abatement averaged $73 million per state in 2005. When GHG and six toxic air pollutants were incorporated in the production model, the estimated private abatement cost was $76 million per state, which was equivalent to 0.7 percent of the industry output in 2005.

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This report studies a subarctic greenhouse located in Nikkala, Sweden called Nikkala handelsträdgård. Through a visit to the greenhouse coupled with the creation of two simulation models this study investigates the differences in energy demand with water-carried and air-carried heating systems, high pressure sodium lights and Light emitting diode lights and insulation in parts of the greenhouse without a active cultivation. With the purpose of comparing the alternatives to the existing system at Nikkala handelsträdgård. This, to evaluate if an investment in insulation for the non cultivating parts or changing to a water-carried heating system with Light emitting diode lights could be considered profitable. Operating a greenhouse in a subarctic climate is a hard task and especially if the operation is year round. Efficient heating systems, thermal screens, dehumidifying measures and Lighting systems are crucial to ensure a profitable business. At Nikkala handelsträdgård they are currently using a pellets burner in combination with a air-carried heating system and HPS lamps in the majority of the greenhouse.  The simulations of the main greenhouse were made in Ansys fluent where the crop section was simulated by implementing source terms to a macro porous medium. The parts of the greenhouse which did not host an active cultivation were simulated in IDA ICE.  It was found that saving of just under 14 800 SEK monthly or 18 % could be made by implementing a water-carried heating system in combination with state of the art lighting. Given this a payback-time of 3-9 years could be expected given different scenarios. An implementation of insulation in the non cultivation greenhouse parts would save up to 25 300 SEK annually or 46 % of the heat demand and the investment would give a payback-time of 1-2 years given different scenarios. Given this a reduction of CO2 equivalents of just under 1,9 tonnes could be achieved yearly. It was concluded that relatively inexpensive investments could have a great impact on the energy demand and thereby the economical performance of a subarctic greenhouse. New operations should be built with a LED light system and water-carried heating system and all parts of the greenhouse which is not housing an active cultivation needs to be insulated.

MESHWR / Department of Hydrology and Water Resources / Greenhouse gases (GHGs) from coal power station affect the behaviour of climatic parameters such as the temperature, rainfall and evaporation, over a long period of time, hence causing climatic trends. This study focused on investigating the impacts of Greenhouse gases (GHGs) from coal power stations on climatic and hydrological trends in Witbank area. To accomplish this, linear regression (LR) and Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test were used to detect the hydro-climatic trends and their significance. GHG emissions were obtained from Eskom’s sustainability report on the Eskom website. Temperature data for the years 1950- 2000 and 1993-2016 and rainfall data for the years 1925-2000 and 1993-2016 were used. Double Mass Analysis (DMA) was used to check the homogeneity and consistency of temperature and rainfall data from South African Weather Services (SAWS) station with the Lynch database and Water Research Commission (WRC) data. Data was patched and extended using LR where necessary. Trends in temperature, precipitation and flow were assessed using MK trend test and LR based on monthly, seasonal, and annual scales. GHG emissions were compared with the hydro-climatic data over time in order to detect the impacts of GHG emissions on temperature, rainfall and streamflow. The MK results indicated that GHG emissions had some impacts on temperature with statistically significant increase in annual, monthly and seasonal time scales for the period 1950-2016. LR also produced the same results for annual temperature. Monthly and seasonal temperature could not be produced with the LR method because of data gaps. The MK and LR models produced similar results, indicating that there was a non-significant increase in temperature before coal power stations were introduced (1950-1974) and a significant increase in temperature after the commissioning of coal power stations (1975-2016). MK and LR also produced the same results for annual rainfall data, indicating that there was a significant increase in rainfall before coal power stations were introduced (1925-1974) and a non-significant increase after the commissioning of coal power stations (1975-2016). For monthly time scales MK and LR indicated increasing and decreasing trends before and after coal power stations were introduced. MK and LR results for streamflow stations B2H004 and B2H007 showed similar results indicating non-significant increase in annual and seasonal streamflow, but differed in monthly streamflow where MK showed significant increases whilst LR showed non-significant trends. The study concluded that GHGs from coal power stations had significant impacts on the hydro-climatic trends in Witbank area. GHGs from coal power stations caused significant increase in temperature as temperature increased by 3.7°C after coal power stations were introduced, whereas temperature had increased by 1.7 °C. It is recommened that more research should be done on alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar energy to check their suitability and applicability in South Africa. / NRF

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Steven Warren / The greenhouse in Throckmorton Hall at Kansas State University (KSU) has a temperature and humidity monitoring system. The system updates its measurements every thirty minutes online, and air temperature is controlled by an automated system. Each room has one temperature and humidity sensor box, which provides a suitable reference but is insufficient for more detailed plant research. To provide a distribution of temperature and humidity, a sensing system should be composed of a collection of sensors that gather data simultaneously. The new multi-point greenhouse monitoring system presented here can be helpful for plant research on a low budget. The demonstration system uses 27 sensor boxes in a 3x3x3 sensor grid (nine sensors at the same height and three different heights). Each sensor box contains temperature, humidity and light sensors that record data once per minute. MATLAB plots of these data indicate that temperature varied between 20 and 25 °C at night. Daytime temperatures are increased by sunlight, and rise to a maximum around noon. Sun-lit areas have higher temperatures than shaded areas, and during cloudy days all areas were almost the same temperature. Relative humidity is inversely related to temperature changes; when the temperature is stable, humidity is also stable. Humidity drops at noon because of increasing temperature and rises again at night. When researchers water the plants, humidity increases immediately. Greenhouse light intensity depends on the room design and the angle of the sunlight. Direct sunlight makes an obvious difference in shaded areas, and cloudy days promote even light distribution. Lighting at night time diffuses well at lower heights.

Greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere play an important role in regulating surface temperatures. The UK is signatory to international agreements that legally commit the UK to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and there is a scientific and political need to better understand greenhouse gas sources on regional scales. The current methods used to provide greenhouse gas emission inventories rely on ‘bottom-up’ techniques and have large associated errors. However, it is also possible to use observations of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and models of atmospheric transport to link the observations with source regions in order to estimate emissions in a ‘top-down’ approach. The key findings presented in this thesis are (a) UK emissions can be retrieved from the Angus tall tower in Scotland using the NAME inversion technique at a finer spatial resolution than has previously been reported using similar ‘top-down’ inverse methods; (b) atmospheric measurements from the Angus tall tower in Scotland have been used for the first time with the NAME inversion technique in order to estimate UK emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and sulfur hexafluoride for the years 2006 to 2009; (c) increasing the number of towers in UK network substantially increases the spatial resolution of greenhouse gas emission estimates. The errors and uncertainties associated with the NAME inversion over the UK domain are discussed and potential future improvements to this approach are presented. Overall, the work presented in this thesis has contributed to our understanding of the spatial and inter-annual variability of UK greenhouse gas emissions.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Geothermal Energy is one of the common talks at present. It has the potential to run long term and can provide base-load energy, at the same time it helps to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. It is found almost everywhere on earth. The resources of geothermal energy range from shallow ground to hot water or hot rock, which can be found few kilometers below the surface and even deeper to magma where the temperature is extremely high. Since its discovery from the ancient times, many technologies have been developed to understand or use geothermal energy properly.  This report is based on literature survey of geothermal energy compared to other energy sources in terms of construction, supply energy and the advantage-disadvantage of the system. From this study it has been found that geothermal power plant does not need external fuel to operate, that’s why the price of geothermal energy does not go up like oil and gas, in USA the cost of geothermal electricity ranges from $0.06 to $0.10 per kilowatt-hour and besides it is one of the most clean, reliable and renewable energy source, which is environment friendly and cheaper than other energy sources.

It is now widely believed that globally averaged temperatures will rise significantly over the next 100 years as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) such as carbon dioxide. Responses to the threat of future climate change are both adaptations to new climate conditions, and mitigation of the magnitude of change. Mitigation can be achieved both through reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and by increasing storage of carbon in the earth system. In particular it is thought that there is potential for increased storage of carbon on land in soils and growing vegetation. There is now a need for research on the potential impacts of changing land use on terrestrial carbon storage, in particular as rapid land use and land cover change has taken place in most of regions of world over the past few decades due to accelerated industrialization, urbanization and agricultural practice. This thesis has developed a novel methodology for estimating the impacts of land use and land cover change (LULCC) on terrestrial carbon storage using Geographic Information Systems and Optimization modelling, using a regional case study (the Tamar Valley Catchment, southwest England) and drawing entirely on secondary data sources (current distributions of soils and vegetation). A series of scenarios for future land cover change have been developed, for which carbon storage, GHG and energy emissions amount have been calculated over the short, medium and long term (2020, 2050 and 2080). Results show that in this region, improving permanent grassland and expanding forestry land are the best options for increasing carbon storage in soils and biomass. The model has been validated using sensitivity analysis, which demonstrates that although there is uncertainty within the input parameters, the results remain significant when this is modelled within the linear programme. The methodology proposed here has the potential to make an important contribution to assessing the impacts of policies relating to land use at the preparation and formulation stages, and is applicable in any geographic situation where the appropriate secondary data sources are available.

Peatlands cover approximately 2-3% of the world’s land area yet represent approximately a third of the worlds estimated total soil carbon pool. They therefore play an important role in regulating global atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations, and even minor changes in their ability to store carbon could potentially have significant effects on global climate change. Much previous research has focussed primarily on land-atmosphere fluxes. Where aquatic fluxes have been considered, they are often in isolation from the rest of the catchment and usually focus on downstream losses, ignoring evasion (degassing) from the water surface. However, as peatland streams have been repeatedly shown to be highly supersaturated in both CO2 and CH4 with respect to the atmosphere, they potentially represent an important pathway for catchment GHG losses. This study aimed to a) create a complete GHG and carbon budget for Auchencorth Moss catchment, Scotland, linking both terrestrial and aquatic fluxes, and b) understand what controls and drives individual fluxes within this budget. This understanding was further developed by a short study of C exchange at the peat-aquatic interface at Mer Bleue peatland, Canada. Significant variability in soil-atmosphere fluxes of both CH4 and N2O emissions was evident at Auchencorth Moss; coefficients of variation across 21 field chambers were 300% and 410% for CH4 and N2O, respectively. Both in situ chamber measurements and a separate mesocosm study illustrated the importance of vegetation in controlling CH4 emissions. In contrast to many previous studies, CH4 emissions were lower and uptake greater where aerenchymous vegetation was present. Water table depth was also an important driver of variability in CH4 emissions, although the effect was only evident during either periods of extreme drawdown or when the water table was consistently near or above the peat surface. Significant pulses in both CH4 and N2O emissions were observed in response to fluctuations in water table depth. Despite the variability in CH4 and N2O emissions and the uncertainty in up-scaled estimates, their contribution to the total GHG and carbon budgets was minor. Concentrations of dissolved CO2 in peatland drainage waters ranged from a mean of 2.88 ± 0.09 mg C L-1 in the Black Burn, Scotland, to a mean of 7.64 ± 0.80 mg C L-1 in water draining Mer Bleue, Canada. Using non-dispersive infra-red (NDIR) CO2 sensors with a 10-minute measurement frequency, significant temporal variability was observed in aquatic CO2 concentrations at the 2 contrasting field sites. However, the drivers of this variability differed significantly. At Mer Bleue, Canada, biological activity in the water column led to clear diurnal cycles, whereas in the Black Burn draining Auchencorth Moss, dilution due to discharge was the primary driver. The NDIR sensor data also showed differences in soil-stream connectivity both between the sites (connectivity was weak at Mer Bleue) and across the range of conditions measured at Auchencorth Moss i.e. connectivity increased during periods of stormflow. Compiling the results from both the terrestrial and aquatic systems at Auchencorth Moss indicated that the catchment was functioning as a net sink for GHGs (382 kg CO2-eq ha-1 yr-1) and a net source of carbon (143 kg C ha-1 yr-1). The greatest flux of GHGs was via net ecosystem exchange (NEE). Terrestrial emissions of CH4 and N2O combined returned only ~5% of CO2-equivalents captured by NEE to the atmosphere, whereas evasion of CO2, CH4 and N2O from the stream surface returned ~40%. The budgets clearly show the importance of aquatic fluxes at Auchencorth Moss and highlight the potential for significant error in source/sink strength calculations if they are omitted. Furthermore, the process based understanding of soil-stream connectivity suggests the aquatic flux pathway may play an increasingly important role in the source-sink function of peatlands under future management and climate change scenarios.