ENERGEO

Earth Observation for monitoring and assessment of the environmental impact of energy use

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The main objective of the EnerGEO project is to develop a strategy for a global assessment of the current and future impact of the exploitation of energy resources on the environment and ecosystems and to demonstrate this strategy for a variety of energy resources worldwide. The global observation strategy will be developed to appropriately assess the impacts of current and future transitions in energy-use on the environment by a combination of: • models already available for the different sources of energ: TASES, REMIX and MESSAGE • existing global datasets from which environmental indicators will be derived to quantify changes to freshwater systems, biosphere, ecosystems, atmosphere and oceans. • existing and currently developed models capable of assessing and forecasting environmental impacts and costs of energy exploitation. By developing a distributed system based on the recommendations of the GEO-Architecture and Data Committee global collection and dissemination of data relating to the effect of energy use on the environment will be supported. By including members of the Energy-Community of Practice of GEO, sustained contribution of the GEO-tasks EN-07-02 and EN-07-3 will be realised. The project takes the testing and demonstration of the observing system and developed scenarios through the execution of dedicated pilots at heart. The pilots are focused on the most important issues relating to atmospheric composition and land degradation through the use of fossil fuels, future impacts of the use and production of biomass on land ecosystems and food security, sustainable integration of solar energy in current grids as well as its visual impact and relating to the impact of wind energy on marine ecosystems. Attention will be given to pollutants that are continuously cycling between the atmosphere and aquatic ecosystems. The results of the pilots feed into an integrated platform that will be run for known scenarios in order to assess energy strategies.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Energy production, transport and consumption put considerable pressure on the environment, causing serious concern regarding energy use sustainability. An EU-funded project developed a tool to evaluate the environmental impact of changes in the energy mix.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The International Energy Agency has estimated that global primary energy demand will considerably increase by 2030. Scientists and policymakers are concerned about the sustainability of the current energy system and the environmental pressures resulting from developing future energy systems.

Against this backdrop, scientists initiated the EU-funded project 'Earth observation for monitoring and assessment of the environmental impact of energy use' (http://www.energeo-project.eu/ (ENERGEO)). Their aim was to assess the current and future impact of energy use on the environment and ecosystems.

As such, ENERGEO linked environmental observation systems with the processes involved in exploiting energy resources. It sought to determine how baseline and low-carbon scenarios affect air pollutant emissions and contribute to mitigating negative impacts on freshwater systems, ecosystems, the atmosphere, ocean and so on. The scenario analyses, available on the platform of integrated assessment, demonstrated successfully how Earth observations can enhance energy potential assessments for different energy models.

New renewable energy potential maps for biomass, wind and solar energy were produced and served in producing applications regarding the optimal siting of renewable energy plants. These applications combined the maps with geospatial life-cycle assessment analyses and physical constraints that limit resource exploitability.

Project assessments showed that there are available renewable energy resources to move to a low-carbon economy in Europe. Moreover, the ENERGEO scenarios showed that it is possible to have a larger share of renewables in the future energy mix. This energy transition offers considerable benefits for mitigating air pollution compared to stringent air quality policies.

ENERGEO contributed to raising awareness of the importance of energy transitions at global and regional scales. To provide tailored information for decision making outside Europe, the assessment models need to be adapted or expanded. Data are available on the http://energeo.researchstudio.at/energeo/catalog/main/home.page (EnerGEO Knowledge Geoportal) .