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Carbon, Water, Energy, and Land-Use Footprint

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 February 2022) | Viewed by 10380

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, 06125 Perugia, Italy
Interests: renewable energies; environmental sustainability; phase-change materials; life-cycle assessment; geothermal energy; computational fluid dynamics; artificial intelligence; simulation and data analysis; high-energy astrophysics; X-ray astronomy; gamma-ray astronomy; cometary science

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Guest Editor
Department of Sustainability, Circular Economy Section, ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, 00059 Rome, Italy
Interests: life cycle assessment; carbon footprint; water footprint; circular economy; environmental sustainability; renewable energies
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to invite you to submit your research paper to the Special Issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073; CODEN: ENERGA) dedicated to “Carbon, Water, Energy and Land-Use Footprint”.

This Special Issue was specifically designed to exploit the nexus between energy and environment, focusing on the main footprints that human activities produce on natural resources.

Submission of papers within the journal scope, including primary and secondary energy sources, energy exploitation, storage, and conversion, policy, research and development, aiming at increasing the present knowledge of their impact on the environment, is particularly encouraged.

Contributions are expected to shed new light, from a life-cycle perspective, into the effect of present and future energy systems on climate change, water availability, natural resources, and environment, possibly suggesting effective and viable strategies to support their sustainability.

Dr. Emanuele Bonamente
Dr. Flavio Scrucca
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • carbon footprint
  • water footprint
  • energy footprint
  • land-use
  • environmental sustainability
  • life-cycle assessment
  • renewable energies
  • climate change
  • sustainable development

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Review

30 pages, 1088 KiB  
Review
Sustainability of Shallow Geothermal Energy for Building Air-Conditioning
by Andrea Aquino, Flavio Scrucca and Emanuele Bonamente
Energies 2021, 14(21), 7058; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14217058 - 28 Oct 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4574
Abstract
Geothermal heat pumps have a widespread diffusion as they are able to deliver relatively higher energy output than other systems for building air-conditioning. The exploitation of low-enthalpy geothermal energy, however, presents crucial sustainability issues. This review investigates the primary forms of the environmental [...] Read more.
Geothermal heat pumps have a widespread diffusion as they are able to deliver relatively higher energy output than other systems for building air-conditioning. The exploitation of low-enthalpy geothermal energy, however, presents crucial sustainability issues. This review investigates the primary forms of the environmental impact of geothermal heat pumps and the strategies for their mitigation. As life-cycle analyses shows that the highest impacts arise from installation and operation stages, most optimization studies focus on system thermodynamics, aiming at maximizing the energy performance via the optimization in the design of the different components interacting with the ground and serviced building. There are environmental studies of great relevance that investigate how the climate and ground properties affect the system sustainability and map the most suitable location for geothermal exploitation. Based on this review, ground-source heat pumps are a promising technology for the decarbonization of the building sector. However, a sustainable design of such systems is more complex than conventional air-conditioning systems, and it needs a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to include the broad environmental boundaries to fully understand the environmental consequences of their operation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbon, Water, Energy, and Land-Use Footprint)
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17 pages, 1285 KiB  
Review
Embodied Energy and Embodied GWP of Windows: A Critical Review
by Francesco Asdrubali, Marta Roncone and Gianluca Grazieschi
Energies 2021, 14(13), 3788; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14133788 - 24 Jun 2021
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 5022
Abstract
The construction sector is one of the most energy-intensive in the industrialized countries. In order to limit climate change emissions throughout the entire life cycle of a building, in addition to reducing energy consumption in the operational phase, attention should also be paid [...] Read more.
The construction sector is one of the most energy-intensive in the industrialized countries. In order to limit climate change emissions throughout the entire life cycle of a building, in addition to reducing energy consumption in the operational phase, attention should also be paid to the embodied energy and CO2 emissions of the building itself. The purpose of this work is to review data on embodied energy and GWP derived from EPDs of different types of windows, to identify the LCA phases, the most impacting materials and processes from an environmental point of view and to perform a critical analysis of the outcomes. The results show a strong dependence on the typology of the frame, with wooden windows having competitive performances: lower average primary energy non-renewable (1123 MJ/FU), higher average primary energy renewable (respectively 817 MJ/FU) and lower global warming potential (54 kgCO2eq/FU). More transparency and standardization in the information conveyed by the program operators is, however, desirable for a better comparability of windows performances. In particular, the inclusion of the operational impact in the EPD is sporadic, but strongly important, since it can be the most impactful phase. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbon, Water, Energy, and Land-Use Footprint)
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