2023

Energy, Environment and Sustainability

Name: Energy, Environment and Sustainability
Code: FIS10345M
6 ECTS
Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours
Scientific Area: Renewable Energy Engineering

Teaching languages: Portuguese
Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese
Regime de Frequência: B-learning

Sustainable Development Goals

Learning Goals

Acquisition of knowledge in the field of energy issues, including issues related to economic and competitiveness in the energy sector, with emphasis on the environmental issue of emission of greenhouse gases and the Kyoto Protocol and related social and job creation social welfare to economic development around the use of renewable energy can bring.

Contents

1. The Earth: subsystems and their interaction. The resources: content, availability and strategic importance. Duration of resources and their distribution.
2. Sustainability and use of resources: Biocapacity and ecological footprint, the ecological balance, the water footprint and the carbon footprint. Energy and sustainability: "life-cycle assessment" in the scope of sustainability. Diagnosis for the sustainability in Portugal.
3. Energy, entropy and exergy. Thermodynamic cycles.
4. Energy sources: fossil fuels, nuclear energy and alternative sources (renewable energy).
5. Energy and exergetics analysis. Energy efficiency. Energy storage.
6. Energy and environment: pollution, greenhouse effect and climate change.

Teaching Methods

Lecture, practical and workshop. Weekly homework assignments, individual projects (2), and group projects (4).

Continuous assessment: 0.40*(average grade for individual assignments) + 0.60*(average grade for group assignments)
Assessment by final exam and by recourse exam: 0.50*exam grade + 0.50*(average grade of group work)

Assessment

The final mark (FM) is obtained from the following equation 


FM= 0,4 group and individual research projects  +  0,4  examinations +  0,2 oral presentations

Recommended Reading

F. P. Sioshansi (editor), 2011. Energy, Sustainability and the Environment. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.


I. Dincer, M. A. Rosen, 2007. Exergy: Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development. Elsevier, Amsterdam.


E. Hertwich, E. van der Voet, S. Suh, A. Tukker, M.  Huijbregts, P. Kazmierczyk, M. Lenzen, J. McNeely, Y. Moriguchi, 2010. Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production, UNEP.


B. K. Bose, 2010. Energy, Environmental Pollution, and the Impact of Power Electronics. IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine march, 6-17


A. F. Miguel, 2010. Carbon dioxide emissions and other environmental indicators: contribution to the study of the European situation between 1990 and 2005. Int. J. Global Warming 2, 81–95


A. F. Miguel, 2009. Quantitative study of the CO2 emission to atmosphere from biological scaling laws. International Journal of Global Warming 1, 129-143.


K. R. Smith, M. Ezzati, 2005. How environmental risks change with development: the epidemiologic and environmental risk transitions revisited. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 30, 291–333


J.R. Siche, F. Agostinho, E. Ortega, A. Romeiro 2008. Sustainability of nations by indices: Comparative study between environmental sustainability index, ecological footprint and the emergy performance indices. Ecological Economics 66, 628– 637


Y. Çengel, M. A. Boles, 2006. Thermodynamics: an engineering approach, 5th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.

Teaching Staff

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