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" Developing economic well-being and preserving a healthy environment are not opposed forces but do, on the contrary, have a primary relationship and require a similar life-cycle-thinking. Maximizing the efficiency of a product over its life cycle will minimize its total financial cost as well as the total environmental impact over its life cycle, according to a new report 'Evaluating environmental performance in low-carbon energy systems' by PE International for European Copper Institute. © Aania The report presents case studies which were developed to substantiate this life-cycle-thinking by delivering high level messages supporting decision making on the sustainable energy arena. The case studies provide results for several realistic - future and present - situations in regard to different scenarios and boundary conditions for energy systems. The aim is to define a common denominator that can be used as a starting point for further developments and discussions. To complement the decision-making landscape, future scenarios are also modelled - not as straight jacket by as a means to assess the influence of various trends or decisions. Choice of power grid mix - a case The case study 1, among the seven case studies, was constructed with the intention of assessing how the choice of power grid mix influences the environmental impact of producing electricity. Electric power can be produced from various renewable and non-renewable resources, and the technologies to harvest renewable resources are gaining momentum, together with the global pressure to increase their contribution to energy provision. In the EU targets have been set for 2020 to generate 20 percent of the total energy demand from renewable resources. National schemes have been set up to reach this overall goal, stricter for the more advanced and economically stable nations and laxer for the economically more disadvantaged ones. Although the target is very demanding, the potential benefits ar

"Continuing on with our daily series on Leonardo ENERGY videos, here's one on the topic of the renewable energy and energy efficiency information jungle, and how to navigate it."

"This paper describes the performance of the network of a typical future residential concept area, as has been studied in the Intelligent E-Transportation Management project. Several scenarios have been elaborated by load flow simulations. The study investigated what level of introduction of electric vehicles, heat pumps, photovoltaic systems and micro- combined heat and power plants is feasible in this network. Possible overload situations are examined and the opportunities of demand side management for the power grid are investigated. In general load-flow simulations show that transformer overloads will occur when electric heat pumps and electric vehicles are introduced together in this specific grid. In that case extension of the grid or of the transformer capacity is necessary. Alternatively, demand side management can be applied successfully to mitigate the overload."