Technologies for reducing emissions and costs in combined heat and power production

Abstract

According Finnish Energy association, in Finland roughly three-quarters of district heat production is based on combined heat and power (CHP) generation. Correspondingly, one-third of electricity is generated using CHP. In Finland, the market share of CHP derived electricity is significant, and therefore used technologies and fuels should be carefully chosen in terms of costs and emissions. In this paper we consider a case of Kuopio, which is the 9th biggest city in Finland. In the past few years, the total usage of fossil fuels has been decreasing and the use of renewable fuels has correspondingly been increasing. The amount of electricity produced with peat has gradually decreased during the last 15 years. The common explaining factor for these trends is the political will and national and municipal level shared common aim to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions. Furthermore, there are new technical innovations available, such as flue gas scrubber and district cooling system, which has been proven to be significant tools to reduce emission and at the same time investments into these innovations have been shown to save energy and money, meaning being greener has been also financially lucrative decision for these sustainability enhancing technology investors.

Analysis of the Past Seven Years of Waste-Related Doctoral Dissertations: A Digitalization and Consumer e-Waste Studies Mystery

“…Practical actions to fight against waste and pollution generation have been carried out greatly in recent times. These include, e.g., factors influencing people's tendencies to separate waste properly [17], giving community members a chance to be part of environmental monitoring activities [18,19], empirical studies and experiences of using gamification to improve people's interests to separate waste [20], industrial emissions reduction through exhaust gasses scrubbers [21], fleet-level data sharing to enhance digital services [22], using digitalization to reduce emissions in warehousing activities [23] and reducing emissions through data analysis [24]. Since the European Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive set targets for collection and subsequent processing of e-waste for material recovery [25], companies have become more committed to reducing WEEE waste through producers' responsibility legislation to improve recycling end-of-life products and take recycling into account in product design [26], and so on.…”

Digital age business model innovation for sustainability in University Industry Collaboration Model

“…Motivation and inspiration sources evolve by sustainability innovations, political guidelines, decisions, and restrictions, which are often behind the pressure towards new solutions. According to [23], decision-making in the public sector, related to the municipal area's infrastructure, is based on analysis of huge amounts of fragmented data, which does force municipalities to seek and utilize more efficient data analysis methods and simultaneously develop data collection, analysing and decision-making tools. For the public sector, trying alone to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will be huge undertaking, especially if the given deadline 2030 is the target.…”