Community Energy Literature Review

  Three of the papers cited below address aspects of climate change mitigation in relation to supply and demand.   A conference paper by Clora and Yu (2021) concentrates on decarbonizing the European economy, which will require interventions on both the supply-side and the demand-side in many sectors.   As examples of action on climate change, the authors list the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, changes to agricultural production systems, more energy-efficient buildings and production processes, and the movement towards low carbon diets and greener modes of transport. They point out that these actions change both demand and supply, and patterns of production and consumption between different sectors and countries. This can have the effect of altering trade flows and the carbon emissions which traded goods embody. The term carbon leakage is used to describe the way in which decreased carbon emissions in one country may lead to rising emissions elsewhere. Th...

The Journal Current Opinion in Psychology had for the theme of its December 2021 issue the Psychology of Climate Change. Papers included in the issue addressed questions such as why, while most people care about environmental quality, they continue with practices that worsen climate change; which of our values are most relevant to climate change; why have so few countries prioritised climate change mitigation despite warnings from scientists over several decades; whether our social needs are key to behaviour concerning climate change; and how do ancestral psychological motivations shape our environmental decisions. Bouman, Steg and Perlaviciute (2021) argue that “to effectively mitigate and adapt to climate change, and to promote society-wide climate action, it is important to know what motivates individuals to support and take climate action”. They identify biospheric, altruistic, egoistic and hedonic values as those most relevant in the context of climate action. Biospheric values...

Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 it has delivered five Assessment Reports, in addition to numerous special reports on subjects such as Emissions, Aviation, Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, and Global Warming. The Assessment Reports typically consist of a report from each of three working groups and a Synthesis Report. Working group I assesses topics including “greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere; temperature changes in the air, land and ocean; the hydrological cycle and changing precipitation (rain and snow) patterns; extreme weather; glaciers and ice sheets; oceans and sea level; biogeochemistry and the carbon cycle; and climate sensitivity.” Working Group II assesses “the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change and options for adapting to it”. Working Group III “focuses on climate change mitigation, assessing methods for reducing greenho...

    O’Malley et al. (2016) proposed the definition that “Energy Systems Integration (ESI) is the process of coordinating the operation and planning of energy systems across multiple pathways and/or geographical scales to deliver reliable, cost effective energy services with minimal impact on the environment.” The vectors which transfer energy from its source to where it is needed, usually at a distance and often at a later time, include electricity, fuels such as oil and gas, and heat-exchanging materials such as the fluids in a central heating system.   O’Malley et al. stress the interaction between the different energy vectors, and with transport, water and communications systems. They note that every energy system is different, that the people involved in such systems have different motivations, incentives, and information, and that “there may be no coordination across these domains to determine the best option for all actors involved.” The authors identify three...

  The low carbon energy sources to be considered are solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, bioenergy and nuclear; with the exception of nuclear these are all normally regarded as renewable energy (RE) sources. Comparisons between these energy sources may be made on issues such as greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy produced, cost and land use, and it is with land use that we will be primarily concerned. Merrill (2021) writes on the land needed for a zero-carbon economy in the U.S. and compares the areas needed to supply 100W for a year by various means. Hydro power needs 296m²; wind with spaced turbines, 37 m²; solar 14 m²; coal, 0.8 m²; nuclear 0.3 m²; and natural gas, 0.1 m². He also provides figures for current land use in the U.S. for its energy sources. Of a total of 81 million acres used for energy production, 51.5 are used to produce biofuels, 8.7 for hydropower, 6.7 for wind farms (the total area, of which the direct footprint is 0.07), 4.8 for power lines, 4.4 for ...

    Ecosystems and climate change are the subjects of a paper by Malhi et al. (2020) which forms part of a Royal Society publication on the “threats, opportunities and solutions” pertaining to this area. The authors explore “how ecosystems respond to climate change”, how their resilience can be enhanced and how they can “assist in addressing the challenge of a changing climate.” A number of papers on the interaction between climate change and the biosphere are introduced, five of which are outlined below. Turner et al. (2020) are concerned with abrupt changes in ecological systems and the research agenda needed for diagnosing them. As examples of such changes they list coral bleaching, changes to kelp forests, ice loss, soaring tree mortality, plummeting forest carbon uptake, and more frequent and severe fires. Such changes have profound consequences for ecosystems and human wellbeing and it is important to understand them. Changes to ecosystems can be driven by many f...