In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the results and case studies presented have been developed within two projects: MAGIC and PARTICIPIA. However, the course does not reflect the views of the funding institutions or of the project partners as a whole, and the case studies were presented purely with an educational and illustrative purpose.
Functional and structural components
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From the course by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: the Nexus between Water, Energy and Food
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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
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From the lesson
Module 4. The challenge of energy accounting
This week we will look at energy. As we did for food, we will start by looking at the problems of energy accounting, and setting a framework to allow us to carry out energy analyses across levels and scales. You will see why energy accounting is one of the most problematic aspects of sustainability, and through the example of the Energiewende we will explore how this affects policy.
Meet the Instructors
Mario GiampietroICREA Research Professor
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Andrea SaltelliGuest researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Tarik SerranoPost-Doc Researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
[MUSIC]
Hi, welcome back to the lesson on the challenge of energy accounting.
In this second lesson, we will deal with
the problem generated by the concept of Harland.
That in complex system, you always have functional structure elements overlapping.
How to combine different types of data, to integrate the information
about structural and functional element operating in the energy sector.
This is important because in this way,
it is possible to provide an integrated system covering different
aspects of the energy system biophysical, economic and spatial data.
Let's get back to the discussion of the if you remember
the functional and structural relation.
We had already the example of the heart and we will use it again.
If you have a network in which a particular element,
the element B, Is defined by the interaction with the rest,
even if you're taking out destruction elements, making up the nodes,
the nodes keep an essence that either sense there is
What should get there and what should get out of there.
In my thesis well known as in the constant niche.
For instance, in the given associative context
herbivores are transforming vegetal biomass in animal biomass.
And this implies that we can have different typology of animals.
For instance, rabbits, sheep, and cattle.
And then they can together express the factional role of the animals.
So in this mapping you remember the [INAUDIBLE] This is the functional type
and these are different structural types combined together in expressing
the function.
So these concepts can be used in the analysis of energy system.
This is an example taking by a paper about Brazilian energy.
Gas and oil sector, so basically we can see that there are different functions,
extraction, transport of the oil to the refinery and
then transport to the final consumer, for
each of these steps we have a functional
component that we are describing with something that's called a processor.
We will discuss again about processor, but this is a profile of input.
What in economy would be called a production function,
the type of input that you need to do this activity.
And then each of these steps can be associated to a function of type,
function complement that is capable of doing what is supposed to be done.
If we can look at the correspondence between functional and structural type.
We can see that there is a loss of one to one mapping,
in the sense extraction can be done by different types of structural types,
on-shore well and off-shore platform.
For transport, you could have different types of transport pipeline Ships,
you can have trucks.
For refinery, you could have different types of refinery.
And then for transportation, again,
you could have different types of transportation.
So what I mean is that the processor, the patterns of input and
output for the functional element,
depend on the pattern of input and output of the structural element.
Let's look at how this can be represented in terms of number.
You have the extraction of crude oil and gas.
Is done by an element,
the function of element which is composed of two structures element.
I'm showing off shore in th same structure for transport.
The functional type of transporting is done by three structural types pipelines,
ships and trucks.
And refining is carried out by three different structural type,
small, medium, large refineries.
And again transportation is own by the three that we saw before.
Can't be done by the three, as a matter of fact.
The transportation to the final consumer,
in general, is done in the vast majority of the case by tracks.
Then we could an account organized in this way, and
this would be the data that we have about on shore and off shore.
Extraction is the amount of oil extracted and
this is the level are spent to extract this
amount of quantity of oil,
then the same thing can be done with pipeline ships and trucks.
And for small, medium, and large refinery and for trucks.
If we are keeping aggregated at this level the information,
we cannot make much out of this information.
But we could divide the input
divided by the throughput and then we start getting benchmarks,
there are referring to topology of technology used there.
So, we would have to say how many hours are required per could be metre of oil and
how many mega joules of fuel could be oil and so on,.
And then we can see the 10% of the oil is extract by technology structural
element we these characteristics and 90% with these characteristics.
We can do the same for the transport to refinery from the type or refinery.
And as soon as we do this, we [INAUDIBLE] Numbers here there are Intensify,
well there are qualitative characteristics of the structure of time.
So you can really see for
instance you have economies of scale if you are using a large refinery.
A larger refinery is using much less energy per unit
of the cubic meter Oil refine.
So, not only at this level when you're looking these values intensity
values you can start looking at the characteristics of the technology.
Coming back to the,
examples of we can now put numbers into the characteristics of individual Element.
So now you can see the different levels of analysis.
You could have a different level of analysis for the total oil and gas sector,
how many hours, petajoules of fuel, and petajoules of electricity that are used.
Then you could have the analysis in quality the terms
of taking a coefficient of the structural times at the level a minus 2 and
then you could have in extensive terms how much labor labor or
fuel at least these consume by the different functional types.
Of course we can now go from the characteristic or individual structural
element or the characteristics of the functional element My due in this case.
In this case, it is on these way.
You have for instance, when you want to calculate how much labor is used in
extraction, you could have the amount of oil that is extracted by the hour per
unit volume by the relative percentage of this technology
it would be this plus the amount of oil times
the hours per cubic meter times the percentage,
the fraction of this technology construction.
It is where you get the total number of hours that were required for
this function.
That are depending on the characteristic of the structural type, and
the relative size in the system.
So of course, you can do the same for each of the order.
And then you can sum all the hours for the different functional system.
And you get what is the total amount of labor, likewise for
the oil and gas sector.
I'll do this in this way, you can make possible simulation of,
if you are changing the relative size, changing the technology.
How this will affect the total performance of the system.
And last observation here, you, this is another analysis,
a similar analysis done in Mexico.
And by Rafael this our PSD student, and so
you could have the functional definition.
And then in the functional definition a type of refinery,
it can be mapped onto different structural time,
the [INAUDIBLE] a type of refinery in Mexico, and
use the you have here to calculate what are the of the functional type.
This type of refinery.
AV light type.
But it is important that at this point we can
now map structural node, where the refineries are located.
And why this is important?
Because in this way the location of the structural
nodes, where they actual platform and locate it.
Can be started in GIS and therefore,
you gotta use layer to see where you are consuming fuel.
Where you are generating jobs.
When you are polluting and so on.
So this is an example of the structural element for destruction, and
this is an example of the structural node for refining.
Conclusion, so
we can identify a specific energy system,
for instance a gas and oil system, as a set of functional
components that are expressing, when put together, a final purpose.
That is supply given amount of oil and
gas To Brazil or to Mexico.
then we can map the functional types onto a set of structural types.
What are the structural types they are performing their required function?
And then, at this point we can breach the gap between statistical data,
how much is consumed in general And the technical data.
How did the characteristic of the is affecting the input output in the matrix.
By combining all this information, then we could have, depending on who we're
looking for, a way of integrating different images on analysis.
If you want to know if you need to import or not, you have to see in functional
term whether or not you are capable of all the functions that are required.
If not, you have to import.
In terms of structural terms, you can see where you have or you can compare if
your technology is We didn't have compared any order and then in environmental terms,
in socio-economic terms you can see where these things are located.
So where you are generating or where you're making developmental stress.
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