Environmental impacts and benefits of information and communication technology infrastructure and services, using process and input-output life cycle assessment

Sustainable development and the Information Society are two concepts that are not commonly associated. However, both could have a major impact on the other. Information and communication technologies (ICT) may have important negative impacts on the environment. At the same time, ICT can also bring improvements. To provide guidance on how ICT devices and applications can be oriented towards positive effects, new methodology and tools are needed to understand and assess these various effects. In that respect, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a pertinent approach, potentially enabling a holistic and in-depth analysis. This thesis proposes to develop appropriate Life Cycle tools and methodology and to apply them to measure the sustainability of ICT devices and of their applications. Specific objectives are: to explore the possibilities of combining Process LCA (PLCA) and Input-Output LCA (IOLCA), and to develop an operational method for ICT applications; to apply the developed method to assess the direct impacts of a computer network, including software and maintenance and developing strategies, to account for the high renewal rate in ICT technologies; to extend the method to consider not only negative impacts, but also benefits of ICT; to develop a method to address effects on lifestyles and rebound effects, and apply it to assess the impacts and benefits of innovative ICT services; Chapter 1 is a short introduction describing the environmental impacts of ICT and how this work addresses them. Chapter 2 presents the main methodological developments: It looks in detail at how PLCA and IOLCA can be compared and used in a complementary way. A method is developed to compare the two approaches in detail and to evaluate the cut-offs processes – the processes that are not traditionally considered in a PLCA – of two specific ecoinvent processes. The conclusions are that a full integration of PLCA and IOLCA remains difficult with our present level of knowledge. IOLCA could be use to complement PLCA when no other evaluation is available, but IOLCA should also be used as a quality check for PLCA and to determine priorities. Chapter 3 assesses comprehensively the environmental impacts of the computer network of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The LCA shows that the computers have the highest environmental impact, but also that short-term technology changes can reduce significantly their impact. The use phase dominates the impacts, but the production phase is also significant. Finally, using the Input-Output (IO) approach leads us to the conclusion that the service-linked contribution included in the total cost of ownership - that is, all of the costs associated with the computer network - has a significant impact on the environment. Chapter 4 evaluates the impacts and benefits of the ICT application to help the management of urban networks. The CREM, in Switzerland, uses a telemonitoring system to assess the water, electricity, district heating, and natural gas networks to increase the efficiency of their management. We want to know how the environmental and economical costs of the infrastructure and its maintenance compare with the savings. An LCA has been performed using a tiered hybrid approach. It shows that the savings overcome largely the cost and environmental impacts of the infrastructure. Chapter 5 analyses an innovative service developed by France Telecom. The visiophonic station enables the substitution of physical interviews by virtual interviews. A PLCA of the service shows that the saved km due to the shift from physical to virtual interviews dominates the effects on the environment and that the potential savings are therefore important. However, depending on what is consumed when using the time and financial resources made available by the service, the related impacts counterbalance the savings. Rebound effects must therefore be considered, studied, and addressed in the development as well as the implementation of new ICT services. Chapter 6 concludes with recommendations towards environmental beneficial uses of ICT and identifies what is needed for the necessary further LCA developments.

Socio-Economic Assessment of Fusion Energy Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment Programme

Denis Bednyagin

Providing safe, clean and affordable energy supply is essential for meeting the basic needs of human society and for supporting economic growth. From the historical perspective, the constantly growing energy use was one of the main factors, which drove the industrialised countries to the current level of prosperity. Meanwhile, in recent decades, the issue of global energy security became a topic of increasing concern in the international policy agenda. On the one hand, the world is facing the problem of exhaustion of most convenient and cheep fuel reserves. The situation is becoming worse, because of the constantly growing demand in developing countries, and the oligopolistic behaviour of major energy exporting countries. On the other hand, the society is becoming more and more sensitive to the environmental pollution problems, caused by the excessive consumption of fossil fuels. In the face of energy security challenge, national governments ought to implement adequate strategies aimed at liberalisation of energy markets, diversification of energy supply mix, enhancement of energy efficiency, encouragement of investments in energy infrastructures, and promotion of innovation in energy sector. In a longer term perspective, the latter point becomes increasingly important, because the world is relying currently on the consumption of non-renewable fossil fuels, and the development of new safe, clean and resource unconstraint energy technologies is vitally needed. In line with this strategy, the major world economies pursue the joint R&D programme on thermonuclear Fusion technology, which represents numerous advantages due to its inherent safety, avoidance of CO2 emissions, relatively small environmental impact, abundance and world-wide uniform distribution of fuel resources. Considering the importance of the projected environmental and economic benefits of Fusion, the questions are raised whether the current level of financial support is sufficient, and what could be the optimal strategy to proceed with the demonstration of Fusion technology, given the time span and potential risks of Fusion RDDD programme. To put these questions into the context, one has to consider the current trends in energy R&D funding, which has seen a drastic decline ( ~50%) over the last three decades. The liberalisation of energy sector poses additional problem due to the fact that free markets partially failure to provide public goods, such as basic science and R&D, because of the so-called spillover effects meaning that the firms are not able to appropriate the integral results of their R&D investments. Regarding the thermonuclear Fusion technology, the decision makers responsible for national energy policies and allocation of public R&D funds may face the following specific questions: What is the expected net socio-economic payoff (social rate of return) of Fusion R&D programme, including both internal and external costs and benefits? What are the reasonable economic arguments that could justify the increase in public funding of the ongoing and future Fusion R&D activities and would stimulate greater involvement of the private sector? What additional value can be obtained through undertaking a more ambitious Fusion R&D programme (accelerated development path), which requires bigger number of experimental facilities, increased funding, and more intense overall efforts of international scientific and industrial community? In order to provide sound arguments for policymakers seeking to optimise public R&D funding, a robust socio-economic evaluation of the whole Fusion research, development, demonstration and deployment (RDDD) programme is needed. At the present stage, prospective analyses of Fusion technology have been emphasised mainly on the investigation of technological issues, estimation of the direct costs of Fusion power and analysis of its potential role in future energy systems. Meanwhile, methodological tools and practical studies aiming at a more comprehensive socio-economic assessment of global long-term energy R&D programmes, such as Fusion, are still incomplete. The primary difficulty concerns the evaluation of positive externalities that may reveal through different types of spillover effects, including but not limited to knowledge, network and market spillovers. While the presence of these effects has been identified in the economic theory and confirmed by empirical studies, their quantitative analysis in the specific case of large scale energy R&D programmes represents some methodological lacuna and deserves further investigation. Another problem relates to the methodology of cost-benefit analysis, which oftentimes ignores the hidden value of R&D projects arising due to the possible flexibility in managerial decisions. In fact, throughout the course of any R&D project, its prospective cash-flows can be significantly improved by pro-active management of different implementation stages, e.g. expanding the production, if market conditions are favourable, or abandoning, if R&D process appears to be unproductive. As a result, the strategic value of any R&D project normally exceeds its net present value (NPV) calculated with the traditional discounted cash flow (DCF) method. Although this strategic approach to capital budgeting, known as Real Options, has been propagated recently in several publications dealing with appraisal of lumpy irreversible investments, its practical application in the context of Fusion RDDD programme has not been mastered yet to the required extent. A particular challenge consists in the need for adequate treatment of different types of uncertainty in the model structure, parameters and input data. Accordingly, the main objective of this thesis consists in complementing the existing studies with an in-depth analysis of the positive externalities (spillover benefits) of Fusion RDDD programme and calculation of its strategic real options value subject to different managerial strategies throughout demonstration and deployment stages. Net social present value of Fusion RDDD programme and potential impact of Fusion R&D activities on the economic performance of the involved private companies are estimated using an integrated modelling framework, which includes the following components: (1) assessment of technological potential for deployment of Fusion power plants based on the simulation of multi-regional long term electricity supply scenarios with PLANELEC model; (2) economic evaluation of Fusion RDDD programme and analysis of different implementation strategies using Real Options model; (3) estimation of the economic value of spillover benefits from participation in Fusion R&D projects at the microeconomic level with the help of financial evaluation model; (4) strategic evaluation of Fusion RDDD programme, taking into account both spillover benefits and real options value, and policy recommendations.

EPFL2010

Méthodologie de la synthèse des systèmes énergétiques industriels

Raffaele Bolliger

This work presents a synthesis method that leads to the preliminary design of industrial energy systems. Such systems are composed of several technologies that transform, through a set of physical unit operations, raw materials and energy into products and energy services. The purpose of the preliminary synthesis is to define which technologies form the system, to calculate their technical characteristics, their operating conditions and their interactions, based on performance indicators such as for example the cost of the system or its environmental impact. This area is studied since a long time and many synthesis approaches are available. However, these methods have significant limitations, particularly in their ability to face the study of more and more complex systems. The main goal of the method presented in this work is to enable the study of large systems and promote the use of the experience gained from previous studies in the form of models and methodological approaches. The synthesis method of industrial energy systems is based on the overall system optimization using a model that is obtained by assembling several modules, representing each a set of physical unit operations and whose equations are formulated with the black box technique, and an integration model that can represent the possible interactions within the system. Optimization is performed using a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, whose objective functions are defined on the basis of calculation of several performance indicators based on the model of the system. To simplify the resolution of this complex system, the optimization problem is decomposed into a master problem, responsible for calculating the characteristics of the units and their operating conditions, and an optimization slave subproblem, which selects the units being part of the system and their interconnections. To ensure its robustness, the slave subproblem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear optimization problem. The slave subproblem is formulated by using process integration techniques, which are extended in this work to allow the synthesis of multiple heat and mass transfer networks. The synthesis problem can thus be defined using an explicit superstructure or by one generated automatically, either implicit or explicit. This work also introduces a technique that greatly reduces the number of degrees of freedom of the integration model. Instead of separately optimizing each ΔTmin/2 associated with heat streams, a formula is applied to calculate their value from a reference case. The ΔTmin/2 optimization is thus reduced to the optimization of a single decision variable related to the reference case, regardless of the size of the problem. The proposed method uses a set of heterogeneous elements, including flowsheeting software for modeling physical unit operations, mathematical programming tools for the formulation of the integration problem, methods for calculating performance indicators and calculation tools such as the optimization algorithm. This work introduces new tools developed to systematically apply the proposed methodology and to automate recurring operations of data transfer and the call of the various used software. In particular, a syntax description is defined as an abstraction layer to describe and to structure the exchanged information. A computing platform has been created to support the application of the method and to ensure the data transfer between its components. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the various aspects of the synthesis method. A first case, involving the synthesis of two combined cycles, has been chosen to illustrate the different application stages of the method and to show the potential reuse of certain modules. Through the integration techniques, it has been possible to identify potential heat recovery that can increase the performance of one of the cycles beyond what had been expected by experts using conventional simulation techniques. The second case study is about the treatment of waste generated by an industrial site active in the field of fine chemicals. Waste treatment can recover different materials and energy services useful for process units, thereby reducing the quantities purchased in the market. The model of multi-network integration can easily solve the complexity of the problem of waste management in developing strategies for allocating waste to the various treatments available for different objective functions related to operating costs and environmental impact.

EPFL2010

SensorScope: Out-of-the-Box Environmental Monitoring

Guillermo Barrenetxea Kobas, Olivier Couach, François Ingelrest, Marc Parlange, Martin Vetterli

An important field of application for wireless sensor networks is environmental monitoring. Given the importance of potential climate changes, environmental impact on cities, and pollution, it is an application domain where sensor networks can have great impact and as such is getting more and more attention. Current data collection techniques are indeed rather limited and make use of very expensive sensing stations, leading to a lack of appropriate observations. In this paper, we present SensorScope, a collaborative project between environmental and network researchers, that aims at providing an efficient and cheap out-of-the-box environmental monitoring system based on a wireless sensor network. We especially focus on data gathering and present the hardware and network architecture of SensorScope. We also describe a real-world deployment, which took place on a rock glacier in Switzerland, as well as the results we obtained.

2008

Méthodologie de la synthèse des systèmes énergétiques industriels

Raffaele Bolliger

EPFL2010

Socio-Economic Assessment of Fusion Energy Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment Programme

Denis Bednyagin

EPFL2010