Energy Systems and Technologies for the Coming Century ...

environmental and human health indicators has been developed during the last decadesin order to assess the magnitude of impacts deriving from the production of good andservices. Technology Radar is focused on searching for impact assessments. Four impactcategories are considered: possible impacts on land use, water use, toxic effects tohumans, and quantitative data on global warming effects. For the latter the emission ofgreenhouse gases (measured in CO2 equivalent) for each unit of energy provided by thetechnologies is applied. For this end data from life cycle assessments (LCA) were usedwhen available.Social IssuesThe social dimension of sustainability is the less developed construct within thediscussion on sustainability (Dillard et al., 2008). However from the rich traditionresearch on social well-being a set of principles can be extracted: Human well-being,equity, democratic government and democratic civil society. The most direct effectsfrom the application of energy technologies are related with the access to energy servicesand the opportunities that can be derived from them (e.g. employment, improved healthand education services etc.).On the other hand, social structures are not only “receptors” of impacts, they also play asignificant role as “agents” in the implementation of energy projects, thus ensuringsustainability of activities requires enabling social structures. Additionally, theinstallation and operation of energy technologies is associated with changes in the useand values of local resources. Such changes may result in conflicts or synergy effectswith other uses or values of the resources.The Technology Radar gathered qualitative information on these three main topics: (a)Impacts related with the provision of energy; (b) Impacts related with possible conflictsand/or synergies with other socio-economic values; (c) The role of local social structuresin order to guarantee long-term adoption of energy solutions.Development status and technological perspectivesThree topics are gathered under these criteria: (a) Information regarding the commercialmaturity of the technology. (b) The current role of the technology in the global energysystem. When available quantitative parameters like installed capacity or marketparticipation is given. (c) Expected technological progress. Significant trends in thefuture development of the technologies are described. To this end specialized literature isreviewed and diverse information about possibilities for cost reduction, optimizationpotentials, weakness to be solved or new emerging concepts is collectedEconomic issuesFor the first version of the Technology Radar data on current capital costs are consideredas well as expected development of costs in the middle or long term, if available. Specialemphasis is given on describing the systems and their costs, because data available inliterature often refer to different system configurations.2.2 Data management systemIn order to storage and manage the information flows during the operation of theTechnology Radar a data management system (DMS) has been developed. The structureof the DMS reproduces the general structure of any energy provision system asillustrated in Figure 1. Energy resources must experiment a whole transformation processbefore the adequate energy form can be provided and applied to meet a specific (energyrelated)need. The energy provision system takes primary energy from energy resourcesand delivers different kind of energy carriers (secondary energy) to consumers.Consumers may make use of technologies that reduce the need of energy (e.g. insulation,day lighting, intelligent controls). The end-application technology provides the actualenergy service to meet the target need. The three main (collection of) objects involved inthe system are: Needs, Technologies and Energy (i.e. the different energy forms).Risø International Energy Conference 2011 Proceedings Page 3473