The causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth has been a controversial subject of the empirical literature. However, there is no common consensus neither on the existence nor on the direction of the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. The purpose of this study is to investigate the causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth using a consistent data set. Recently developed Granger causality tests in panel data models are used to uncover the existence and direction of causality between energy consumption economic growth in 21 low-income, 35 middle-income, and 26 high-income countries over the period 1990&ndash / 2004. The empirical results explicitly support that the Granger causality from energy consumption to economic growth is more common in high-income countries than low-income and middle-income countries. Furthermore, the Granger causality from economic growth to energy consumption is more common in low-income and middle-income countries than high-income countries.

This study analyzes consumers' behavioral responsiveness to changes in price and policy regarding residential electricity consumption, using a hybrid method of econometric analyses and energy market simulations with the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). First, this study estimates price elasticities of residential electricity demand with the most recent Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) data, collected in 2005, employing a conventional econometric model and a discrete/continuous choice model. Prior to the NEMS experiments with price shocks and consumers' behavioral features, this study uses NEMS to examine how energy policies would affect changes in retail electricity price in the future. When climate policies are implemented nationally, electricity prices are estimated to increase by 17% in 2030 with a carbon cap and trade initiatives and by 4% with Renewable Electricity Standards (RES). The short-run elasticity of demand estimated from the 2005 RECS is found to be in a range of -0.81 ~ -0.66, which is more elastic than the current NEMS assumption of -0.15. The 2005 RECS dataset details information about American households' energy consumption. This rich source of micro-level data complements the existing econometric analysis based on time series data. Electricity price (either census-division average price or household average price), annual income and number of rooms are found to be three major determinants of the level of electricity consumption. The difference in short-run price elasticity leads to a difference in social welfare estimates of energy policies and energy market forecasts. This study suggests that the estimate of social welfare loss caused by electricity price increase is overestimated if the elasticity is assumed to be smaller than the actual responsiveness. Supposing that 1) the short-run elasticity of -0.66 reflects the actual consumers' responsiveness to price changes in the present and future and 2) retail electricity prices permanently increase by 10%, the welfare loss caused by the price increases would be estimated 0.9 billion dollars less than the current estimates with the elasticity of -0.15. This result suggests that if people are assumed to be more elastic to price signals, the time it takes for a policy to accomplish its goal could be shorter. In addition to assessing potential savings expected from consumers' behavioral changes with the concept of price elasticity of demand in neoclassical economic theory, this study reviews economic and non-economic theories about behavioral features of energy consumers and discusses how existing information programs could be improved.

<p> </p><p> </p><p>According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), economic growth will eventually cause carbon dioxide emissions to decrease. Is this the case in Sweden? A time series covering the period 1800-1995 is used to analyze the relation between carbon dioxide emissions and income per capita in Sweden. The empirical results indicate that an EKC for carbon dioxide is highly likely to exist in Sweden for the examined period. To take the analysis further, a cross-section data set is employed to examine the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, income per capita and 4 other potentially influential variables in 75 countries. Only carbon intensity of energy is significant for carbon dioxide emissions. This implies that the utilized energy source is of importance, and it is crucial to separate energy consumption from carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions is a matter of structural aspects such as the type of industry and production a country comprise, and what type of energy that is consumed; not merely the quantity of energy. Sweden has experienced a shift in production techniques and in energy supply, and the energy-efficiency has improved during the past 100 years. It is consequently plausible to believe that it is not a critical income per capita which decreases CO</p><p>2  emissions – it is the “right” energy sources, energy efficiency and improved technology.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). "March 2009." "Supervisors: Professor Les Oxley and Professor John Gibson." Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-359). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Univ., 2003. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Environmental aspect of pavement, unlike its economic counterpart, is seldom considered in the theoretical study and field practices. As a highly energy and material intensive infrastructure, pavement has great potential to contribute to the environment protection, which, in root, depends on the in-depth understanding of the environmental impacts, holistically and specifically. A life cycle assessment (LCA) model is used to fulfill the goal. This research firstly carried out extensive literature review of LCA studies on pavement to identify the major research gaps, including: incompleteness of the methodology, controversy of the functional unit, and unawareness of feedstock energy of asphalt, etc. Based on that, a comprehensive methodology to apply the LCA model in the context of pavement engineering was developed. The five-module methodology, including material module, maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) module, construction module, congestion module, and end of life module, covers almost every stage of pavement for a life time. The unique contribution of the proposed methodology lies in the deep-going modeling of the congestion module due to construction and M&R activities and the great efforts on the usage module. Moreover, the proposed methodology is a complex structure, demanding many sub-models to enrich the model bank and therefore another three contributions are made accordingly. Specifically, the environmental damage costs (EDCs) were calculated based on the estimates of the marginal damage cost of involved air pollutants; a function describing the relationship of pavement roughness and average vehicle speed was established; and an improved pavement M&R optimization algorithm was developed with the incorporation of EDCs. To demonstrate how the proposed methodology can be implemented, a case study of three overlay systems, including hot mixture asphalt (HMA), Portland cement concrete (PCC), and crack, seat and overlay (CSOL), was performed. Through the case study, the PCC option and CSOL options are found to have less environmental burdens as opposed to the HMA option while the comparison between the former two is indeterminate due to the great uncertainties associated with usage module, especially pavement structure effect; and the material, congestion, and usage modules are the three major sources of energy consumptions and air pollutant emissions. Traditionally, cost evaluation of pavement does not refer to EDC while the developed M&R optimization algorithm suggests that EDC occupies a significant fraction of the total cost constitution. And the M&R algorithm leads to a reduction from 8.2 to 12.3 percent and from 5.9 to 10.2 percent in terms of total energy consumptions and costs compared to the before optimization results. On the other aspect, pavement communities seem to prefer long life pavement because they believe small increase of pavement thickness prolongs the service life and thus leads to a smaller marginal cost while the study in Chapter 5 suggests that it may not be always true, at least in terms environmental impacts. Specially, frequently used pavement designs in the U.S. of two design lives, 20 years and 40 years, at three levels of traffic, are evaluated for their environmental impacts using the proposed methodology. It is found that only at high traffic volumes, the 40-year designs carry environmental advantages over their 20-year counterparts while the opposite is true at the low or medium traffic volumes. Unfortunately, it is not possible to determine the watershed traffic volumes due to the disturbance of many external factors.

Residential and light-commercial buildings comprise a significant portion of buildings in the United States. They account for a large fraction of the total amount of energy used in the U.S., and they also represent environments where people spend the majority of their time. Thus, the design, construction, and operation of these buildings and their systems greatly affect energy consumption and exposures to airborne pollutants of both indoor and outdoor origin. However, there remains a need to improve knowledge of some key source and removal mechanisms of indoor and outdoor pollutants in residential and light-commercial buildings, as well as their connections to energy use and peak electricity demand. Several standardized field test methods exist for characterizing energy use and indoor air quality in actual buildings, although few explicitly address residential and light-commercial buildings and they are generally limited in scope. Therefore, the work in this dissertation focuses on improving methods to characterize three particular building components for their impacts on exposures to indoor pollutants and their implications for energy consumption: (1) central forced-air heating and cooling (HAC) systems, (2) HAC filters, and (3) building envelopes. Specifically, the research in this dissertation is grouped to fulfill two primary objectives of developing and applying novel methods to: (1) characterize and evaluate central air-conditioning systems and their filters as pollutant removal devices in residential and light-commercial buildings, and to explore their implications for energy consumption, and (2) characterize and evaluate the ability of two particular outdoor pollutants of concern (ozone and particulate matter) to infiltrate indoors through leaks in building envelopes. The research in this dissertation is divided into four primary investigations that fulfill these two objectives. The first investigation (Investigation 1a) addresses Objective 1 by first providing a detailed characterization of a variety of operational characteristics measured in a sample of 17 existing central HAC systems in occupied residential and light-commercial buildings in Austin, Texas, and exploring their implications for exposure to indoor pollutants, energy use, and peak electricity demand. Among the findings in this study, central air-conditioning systems in occupied residential and light-commercial buildings did not operate most of the time, even in the hot and humid climate of Austin, Texas (i.e., ~25% of the time on average in the summer). However, average recirculation rates still make central air-conditioning systems competitive as particle removal mechanisms, given sufficient filtration efficiency. Additionally, this investigation used a larger, much broader, dataset of energy audits performed on nearly 5000 single-family homes in Austin to explore common inefficiencies in the building stock. Residential and light-commercial air-conditioning systems are often inefficient; in fact, residential central air-conditioning systems in particular likely account for nearly 20% of peak electric demand in the City of Austin. As much as 8% of peak demand could be saved by upgrading all single-family homes in Austin to higher-efficiency equipment. The second investigation (Investigation 1b) also addresses Objective 1 by developing and applying a novel test method for measuring the in-situ particle removal efficiency of HAC systems and filters in residential and light-commercial buildings. Results from the novel test method as performed with three test filters and 0.3–10 μm particles in an unoccupied test house agreed reasonably well with results from other field and laboratory test methods. Low-efficiency filters did not increase particle removal much more than simply running the HAC system without a filter, and higher-efficiency filters provided greater than ~50% removal efficiency for most particles greater than 1–2 μm in diameter. The benefit of this test method is that it can be used to measure how filters perform in actual environments, how filter removal efficiency changes with actual dust loading, and how much common HAC design and installation issues, such as low airflow rates, duct leakage, fouled coils, and filter bypass airflow, impact particle removal in real environments. The third investigation (Investigation 2a) addresses Objective 2 by developing and applying a novel test methodology for measuring the penetration of outdoor ozone, a reactive gas, through leaks in exterior building envelopes using a sample of 8 single-family residences in Austin, Texas. These measurements represent the first ever measurements of ozone penetration factors through building envelopes of which I am aware, and penetration factors were lower than the usual assumption of unity (i.e., P = 1) in seven of the eight test homes (ranging from 0.62±0.09 to 1.02±0.15), meaning that some building envelopes provide occupants with more protection from indoor exposures to ozone and ozone reaction byproducts than others. Additionally, ozone penetration factors were correlated with some building characteristics, including the amount of painted wood siding on the exterior envelope and the year of construction, suggesting that simple building details may be used to predict ozone infiltration into homes. Finally, the fourth investigation (Investigation 2b) also addresses Objective 2 by refining and applying a test methodology for measuring the penetration of ambient particulate matter through leaks in building envelopes, and using a sample of 19 single-family residences in Austin, Texas to explore correlations between experimentally-determined particle penetration factors and standardized fan pressurization air leakage tests. Penetration factors of particles 20–1000 nm in diameter ranged from 0.17±0.03 to 0.72±0.08 across 19 homes that relied solely on infiltration for ventilation air. Particle penetration factors were also significantly correlated with results from standardized fan pressurization (i.e., blower door) air leakage tests and the year of construction, suggesting that occupants of older and leakier homes are exposed to more particulate matter of outdoor origin than those in newer tighter homes. Additionally, blower door tests may actually offer some predictive ability of particle penetration factors in single-family homes, which could allow for vast improvements in making easier population exposure estimates. Overall, the work in this dissertation provides new methods and data for assessing the impacts of central air-conditioning systems, filters, and building envelopes on human exposure to indoor pollutants and energy use in residential and light-commercial buildings. Results from these four primary investigations will allow building scientists, modelers, system designers, policymakers, and health scientists to make better informed decisions and assumptions about source and removal mechanisms of indoor pollutants and their impacts on building energy consumption and peak electricity demand. / text

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

Titanium alloys are widely utilized in the aerospace, biomedical,marine, petro-chemical and other demanding industries due to theirdurability, high fatigue resistance and ability to sustain elevateoperating temperature. As titanium alloys are difficult to machine, dueto which machining of these alloys ends up with higher environmentalburden. The industry is now embracing the sustainable philosophy inorder to reduce their carbon footprint. This means that the bestsustainable practices have to be used in machining of titanium alloys aswell as in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint and greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions.In this thesis, a better understanding towards the feasibility of shiftingfrom conventional (dry and flood) cooling techniques to the vegetableoil based minimum quantity cooling lubrication (MQCL) wasestablished. Machining performance of MQCL cooling strategies wasencouraging as in most cases the tool life was found close to floodstrategy or sometimes even better. The study revealed that theinfluence of the MQCL (Internal) application method on overallmachining performance was more evident at higher cutting speeds. Inaddition to the experimental machinability investigations, FiniteElement Modeling (FEM) and Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD)Modeling was also employed to prediction of energy consumed inmachining and cutting temperature distribution on the cutting tool. Allnumerical results were found in close agreement to the experimentaldata. The contribution of the thesis should be of interest to those whowork in the areas of sustainable machining. / <p>QC 20150915</p>

Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB) is an emerging research area concerned with the application of design strategies to influence consumer behaviour during the use phase of a product towards more sustainable action. Current DfSB research has primarily focussed on strategy definition and selection, with little research into formalising a mature design process through which to design these behaviour changing interventions. Furthermore, understanding the actual sustainability and behavioural impact yielded through such investigations is limited in addition to the suitability and transferability of evaluation methods and results having seldom been discussed. This thesis investigated how DfSB models and strategies can be implemented within a structured design process towards a sustainable change in user behaviour. This was achieved by focussing a case study within the UK social housing sector with the aim of reducing domestic energy consumption through behaviour changing intervention, whilst maintaining occupant defined comfort levels. Following an in depth study of physical and behavioural control mechanisms as well as comfort and energy within the research context, a behaviour changing prototype was developed through an augmented user-centred design process, resulting in a physical manifestation of one specific DfSB strategy feedback; a user agentive performance indicator. In order to evaluate this feedback prototype, an evaluation framework was developed, targeted at the three fundamental questions that arise when faced with the evaluation of a DfSB strategy led intervention: (1) Did the produced design solution function for the specified context? (2) Has the user's behaviour changed as a consequence of the design intervention? (3) Is the change in user s behaviour sustainable? Applying these core questions in practice through focus groups and user trials resulted in an evaluation of unparalleled depth. The findings of this thesis illustrate the success of using this augmented design process and tripartite questioning strategy towards the design and evaluation of a DfSB strategy led intervention, building a vital knowledge platform for the formalisation of transferable DfSB theory, design and evaluation methods.