“School of Physics”
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| Paper IPM / P / 17551 |
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Paris Agreement (2015) is the most important international agreement to reduce carbon
and green-house gas emission aimed at reducing global warming. Iran is among
the 197 countries signed the Agreement, however it has not yet been listed in the 191
countries who officially committed to the Agreement. Among the six countries who
are not committed to the Agreement, Iran (1.66%), Turkey (1.04%) and Iraq (0.48%)
have the highest green-house gas emissions.
International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that global carbon emission to be
doubled by 2050. British Petroleum (BP) anticipates that global demand for oil to
increase 30% by 2035 whilst the values are to be 50% for natural gas and coal. In
addition, IEA report on World Energy Vision establishes the energy consumption as
the main cause of air pollution. Thus it proposes three actions to reduce air pollution
to the member states: i) fighting poverty in energy sector in developing countries, ii)
reducing green-house gas emission using controlling processes after fuel combustion,
and iii) development of clean and sustainable energy solutions. Therefore viewing air
pollution from the energy perspective leads us to developing solution to reduce energy
consumption and develop clean energy solutions.
In Iran, energy generation relies heavily on fossil fuel sources. Hence, in the last
few years the growing need for energy and the catastrophic impact of fossil fuels on
the environment, and on the air pollution in particular, has led the policy makers to
introduce relevant legislations such as Clean Air Act (1396-Persian calendar) with the
focus on reducing energy consumption and developing clean energies. Statistical data
show that 92% of electricity in Iran is generated from steam power plants using fossil
fuels (oil, gasoline and natural gas) as source of the energy. The share of sustainable
alternative is less than one percent. To put these data into perspective, sustainable energy
in the US is 12%, in Europe is 19.7% with 32% forecast until 2030, and 27.7% in Australia.
Tehran City Hall (Tehran municipality), the major management body and policy
maker for the city of Tehran has been deliberately pursuing alternative energy and
energy reducing policies. In the third five-year planning of the city, for instance, 10%
reduction of energy and feasibility studies of using clean and renewable energies for
public buildings and spaces has been set as a target.
Buildings on average consume 40% of energy hence contribution to 40% of the
green-house gas emission. Therefore, introducing policies and legislations to optimize
energy consumption in buildings and using renewable energies in building is
a necessity to reduce their environmental impact. The City of Tehran has conducted
a comprehensive study on energy consumption in its public buildings and classified
them in 7 categories. For each category a suitable plan is developed and executed.
This program has showed significant progress in reducing energy consumption and
developing renewable energies, however, it is far from the targets set by the five-year
plan.
In this study, we review requirements set by national and international commitments
in energy consumption and developing renewable energies. Subsequently the most
recent solutions to reduce energy consumption and renewable energy generation are
evaluated. These solutions include smart building technologies, natural lighting, LED
lighting, thermal insulations, low-emission windows, wind energy, photovoltaics, solar
thermal, and efficient space cooling and more.
The fact that Iran is a warm country with average solar irradiation of 1200 to 2300
kWh/m2 annually, suggests a great potential for using solar energy solutions. On the
other side, the large need for space cooling in warm seasons has been highlighted as
the lack of energy supply in summer 1400 revealed the large share of space cooling
loads on the electricity grid and the need to ramp up the electricity generation. Therefore,
solutions such as passive or radiation cooling technologies to reduce the space
cooling energy load are highly critical helping to solve the energy problem in the
country. As statistical data reveals, in dry climates such as Tehran 30-40% of energy
consumption in buildings is for space cooling.
In this research, we also substantially review the basics of zero-energy coolers also
called passive or radiation coolers. The latest scientific and technological developments
in this field has been reported followed by providing an evaluation as to which
processes would be suitable for scale-up and commercialization. These technologies
rely on nano-technology materials that can selectively reflect and absorb different
parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. The products that can be useful for a variety
of applications are radiation cooling paints and foils. The cool paints can be used for
coating the roofs and walls of the buildings or surfaces such as the body of the evaporative
coolers that are commonly and widely used in Iran. The results of a preliminary
analysis based on the available data from sample buildings show that the passive
coatings has a great potential in increasing efficiency of the coolers, and lowering the
energy needed for space cooling.
Passive cooling technology seems promising for cooling energy reduction, however,
an accurate estimation of the cooling power upon application of coatings needs
to be calculated for a particular building considering the local solar irradiation and
geographical location. This reports aims to introduce the passive cooling technology
and drive the research and developments in the country to further develop and commercialize
this technology in the country. Additionally, it provides the community
an overall and useful state-of-the-art information on various eco-friendly solutions
including radiative cooling to tackle global warming by energy management in the
buildings.
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