The importance of energy conservation in all the aspects of energy production, transportation, distribution and utilisation should not be underestimated. A special attention to that is paid since the oil crisis in 70’s of the last century. Today energy efficiency has increased considerably, but there is still a potential for energy savings. This potential is widely spread in power plants, energy supply systems, factories, plants, agricultural and residential facilities.   In the countries in transition, such as former socialist countries, energy saving policies have started not so long time ago and a lot of work is to be done in order to improve energy efficiency and approach the level of developed countries. In Moldova, the energy sector is one of the most problematic parts of the national economy. 98% of the primary energy resources are imported, which complicates very much energy security in the state. Some internal problems, such as lack of investments in the sector, old and inefficient facilities, uncontrolled and unpaid energy consumption, internal social and political instability create additional difficulties in improving this situation. Industry and residential sector consume the highest amount of the supplied energy. It is obvious that improved energy efficiency in these sectors could lead to big energy savings. Reduction in energy consumption will favourably influence the impact of the energy sector on the environment.   The present work aims at identifying energy saving potential in the industrial and residential facilities in Moldova. Interdependence between energy and environment, the positive influence of reduced energy consumption on the environment is shown. Future development strategies and energy resources potential are also discussed.   A brief history overview of Moldova and of the energy sector development are presented for a better understanding of the particularities and reasons of the present situation. This is followed by a description of the energy sector in Moldova, its infrastructure and economy, the problems to pass and energy security objectives. In the following part, energy and environment issues are discussed and the way energy conservation influences environmental impact. Environmental aspects of energy use, policy, legislation and institutions in Moldova are also described. Energy Conservation Programme is presented concluding this part.   Energy utilisation sector, with deeper analysis of industrial and residential parts is overviewed in the main part of the study. Energy conservation measures are discussed in case studies and the energy savings potential is shown.   Scenarios and strategies for future development of the energy system of Moldova are described as a result of the study. Conclusions and further work suggestions are made.

Efficient use of resources and utility is the key to reduce the price of the commodities produced in any industry. This in turn would lead to reduced price of the commodity which is the key to success. Sustainability involves integration of all the three dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Sustainable manufacturing involves the use of sustainable processes and systems to produce better sustainable products. These products will be more attractive, and the industry will know more about the climate impact from their production. Manufacturing companies use a considerable amount of energy in their production processes. One important area to understand the sustainability level at these types of industries is to study this energy use. The present work studies energy use in a large-scale tool manufacturing company in Sweden. Value Stream Mapping method is implemented for the purpose of mapping the energy use in the different operations. To complement this, an energy audit has been conducted, which is a method that include a study and analysis of a facility, indicating possible areas of improvements by reducing energy use and saving energy costs. This presents an opportunity for the company to implement energy efficiency measures, thus generating positive impacts through budget savings. Less energy use is also good for the environment resulting in less greenhouse gas emissions level. This also helps in long-term strategic planning and initiatives to assess the required needs and stabilize energy use for the long run. Social sustainability completes the triad along with environmental and economic sustainability. In this study, the social sustainability is reflected with the company’s relationship with its working professionals by conducting a survey. The sustainable manufacturing potential found in the case study indicates that significant progress can be made in the three sustainability dimensions. Although, the scope of the thesis is limited to a tool manufacturing company, several of the findings could be implemented in other tool companies as well as industries belonging to other sectors. / <p>The thesis is a joint report between Linköping and Uppsala University. My thesis teammate has published it before at UU Diva Portal. The URL is: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?dswid=8179&amp;pid=diva2%3A1449223&amp;c=1&amp;searchType=SIMPLE&amp;language=en&amp;query=sustainable+manufacturing&amp;af=%5B%22dateIssued%3A2020%22%5D&amp;aq=%5B%5B%5D%5D&amp;aq2=%5B%5B%5D%5D&amp;aqe=%5B%5D&amp;noOfRows=50&amp;sortOrder=author_sort_asc&amp;sortOrder2=title_sort_asc&amp;onlyFullText=false&amp;sf=undergraduate</p><p> </p> / Green Factory project, AB Sandvik Coromant

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The adverse effects of climate change, the steady depletion of fossil fuels, and the industrialization of developing countries have resulted in an increased supply and demand of renewable thermal energy. Renewable thermal energy sources like solar thermal energy produce fewer local emissions but have a temporally inconsistent power output. The consumer space heating and domestic hot water demands also vary as a function of time. This creates a mismatch between thermal energy supply and demand. Energy storage is one method of solving this problem. However, conventional methods, like hot water storage, are voluminous and can only store heat for short periods of time. Therefore, compact long-term energy storage technologies, like sorption-based energy storage systems, require research and development. The current work aims to identify and develop suitable materials for sorption-based energy storage systems and to determine the effects of operating conditions on the performance of thermal energy storage systems. A material screening study was performed, which identified MCM-41, SAPO-34, and silica gel, which are all silica-based materials, as suitable materials for sorption-based energy storage. The effects of key operating variables for a silica gel/water-vapour adsorption-based energy storage system were quantified and optimized. The optimized system energy storage density value was nearly double that of unoptimized systems. The effects of salt impregnation were investigated by impregnating different hosts with MgSO4 salt and varying the concentration of the salt in the host material. All composites were stable after three hydration/dehydration cycle. A silica gel/MgSO4 hybrid containing 33 wt% MgSO4 was found to have the highest energy storage density of all of the MgSO4-based composites. Finally, CaCl2, a promising hygroscopic for thermal energy storage was stabilized via impregnation into silica gel and encapsulation in methylcellulose. A novel synthesis technique involving the simultaneous impregnation of silica gel with CaCl2 and encapsulation in methylcellulose produced a stable encapsulated salt-in matrix composite with a high energy storage performance.

The integration of on-site renewable systems with energy storage devices is an important topic in improving energy management for commercial buildings and industrial facilities. Energy storage technologies have the ability to impact the end user’s power reliability while creating measurable energy and cost savings. However, the potential yet remains to increase the application of these systems. To determine the feasibility of renewables and energy storage in commercial and industrial applications, a pre-screening software tool is developed using data-driven algorithms to complete an energy, cost, and carbon savings analysis of storage implementation. A case study of a standalone retail building is also modeled using a comprehensive building energy modeling software program, EnergyPlus, to simulate the energy and cost savings of a solar PV with battery energy storage systems. The work in this project collectively analyzes the future impacts of renewables integrated with energy storage for small-and-medium industrial facilities and commercial buildings.

Many utility-scale solar farms use horizontal single axis tracking to follow the sun throughout the day and produce more energy. Solar farms on skewed topography produce complex shading patterns that require precise modeling techniques to determine the energy output. To accomplish this, MATLAB was used in conjunction with NREL weather predictions to predict shading shapes and energy outputs. The MATLAB models effectively predicted the sun’s position in the sky, panel tilt angle throughout the day, irradiance, cell temperature, and shading size. The Cal Poly Gold Tree Solar Farm was used to validate these models for various lengths of time. First, the models predicted the shading and power output for a single point in time. Four points of time measurements were taken; resulting in 6 to 32 percent difference in shade height, 5 to 60 percent difference for shade length, and 29 to 59 percent difference for power output. This shows the difficulty of predicting a point in time and suggests the sensitivity of numerous variables like solar position, torque tube position, panel tilt, and time itself. When predicting the power over an entire day, the power output curves for a single inverter matched almost exactly except for in the middle of the day due to possible inaccurate cell temperature modeling or the lack of considering degradation and soiling. Since the backtracking region of the power curve is modeled accurately, the optimization routine could be used to reduce interrow shading and maximize the energy output for a single zone of the solar field. By assuming every day is sunny, the optimization routine adjusted the onset of backtracking to improve the energy output by 117,695 kilowatt hours for the year or 8.14 percent compared to the nominal settings. The actual solar farm will likely never see this increase in energy due to cloudy days but should improve by a similar percentage. Further optimization of other zones can be analyzed to optimize the entire solar field.

Cal Poly’s Recreation Center expansion project provides an opportunity to implement Energy Harvesting From Exercise Machines (EHFEM). Part of this implementation is a system that reports the exercise machines’ energy production. Although products capable of reporting exercise machine energy harvesting statistics exist, they have limited capabilities. This thesis project defends a system capable of reporting exercise machine power statistics in near real-time. The system consists of display, database, and power measurement modules. The display module presents statistics in an interactive, graphical, and widely-accessible way. The database module provides an efficient way of organizing and accessing stored statistics. Multiple power measurement module types gather power and energy generation measurements from multiple exercise machine types and transmit those measurements to the database module over the computer network.

This dissertation examines the employment impacts of investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency in the U.S. A broad expansion of the use of renewable energy in place of carbon-based energy, in addition to investments in energy efficiency, comprise a prominent strategy to slow or reverse the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This study first explores the literature on the employment impacts of these investments. This literature to date consists mainly of input-output (I-O) studies or case studies of renewable energy and energy efficiency (REEE). Researchers are constrained, however, by their ability to use the I-O model to study REEE, since currently industrial codes do not recognize this industry as such. I develop and present two methods to use the I-O framework to overcome this constraint: the synthetic and integrated approaches. In the former, I proxy the REEE industry by creating a vector of final demand based on the industrial spending patterns of REEE firms as found in the secondary literature. In the integrated approach, I collect primary data through a nationwide survey of REEE firms and integrate these data into the existing I-O tables to explicitly identify the REEE industry and estimate the employment impacts resulting from both upstream and downstream linkages with other industries. The size of the REEE employment multiplier is sensitive to the choice of method, and is higher using the synthetic approach than using the integrated approach. I find that using both methods, the employment level per $1 million demand is approximately three times greater for the REEE industry than for fossil fuel (FF) industries. This implies that a shift to clean energy will result in positive net employment impacts. The positive effects stem mainly from the higher labor intensity of REEE in relation to FF, as well as from higher domestic content and lower average wages. The findings suggest that as we transition away from a carbon-based energy system to more sustainable and low-carbon energy sources, approximately three jobs will be created in clean energy sectors for each job lost in the fossil fuel sector.

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events is a consequence of changing climate. The direct physical causes are carbon dioxide emissions from the intensive use of fossil fuels and accelerated soil and plant decomposition from alterations in land use. Efforts to avoid a global environmental calamity and engineer a shift towards a more sustainable path are at the forefront of global agenda. However, beyond all the commitments and good intentions, there is no consensus on what constitutes sustainability, the requirements for a power transition towards a post-carbon era, or the energy resources available to achieve economic goals. This dissertation aims to clarify the relationship between energy and sustainability. We begin with a review of capacity factors for the leading power technologies at a global and regional scale to understand performance of these technologies and their potential. To address the challenge of evaluating sustainability, we propose a new approach, the eight-dimensional sustainability octagon. This approach broadens the fundamental pillars of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic), and provides a simple yet robust tool for comparing the sustainability of countries on the Earth. This analysis shows that the world is performing at one-third of achievable sustainability levels. Afterwards, we assess current global energy mix from a primary power perspective and estimate energy savings from- and limitations of electrification. We evaluate the power requirements, nominal power to be installed, infrastructure needs, and carbon dioxide emissions associated with replacing current fossil electricity generation mix with renewables. This evaluation indicates that complete decarbonization of the global power mix is impossible by 2050, and electrification could further delay decarbonization. At a single country level (case study), we analyze connections between the ongoing energy-environmental crisis and population growth to assess the feasibility of achieving the government of Rwanda’s developmental goals, given available power resources. We evaluate Lake Kivu in Rwanda as a complex methane source and energy system. We assess the implicit risks and environmental impacts of large-scale methane production to generate electricity. From our analysis, Rwanda is overpopulated, and the available energy resources can only secure low incomes for the population.

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