The 16th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2024), Niigata City, Japan, September 1-5, 2024

Title:

Geospatial Approaches to Modeling and Simulating Urban Building Energy Efficiency and Mitigation Measures

Abstract:

There is widespread agreement that geospatial AI, remote sensing, and geographic information system (GIS) play an increasingly important role in estimating, modeling and predicting carbon emissions and sinks. Due to its long-term availability, high resolution, repetitive and wide coverage, satellite image data has been widely utilized to track building energy consumption and carbon emissions in response to global climate change. This presentation will briefly discuss how geospatial methods have been applied in studying building energy use and carbon emission in global cities, focusing primarily on the themes of building energy consumption and mitigation measures for its reduction. This talk will present a GIS-based approach to combine climate modeling, building energy simulation, and inventory of building characteristics to quantify climate change’s effect on building energy use in selected cities. Then, the potential of green and cool roofs in reducing pedestrian-level urban temperature and decreasing building energy consumption in different urban contexts will be assessed. Finally, future research directions for effective use of geospatial AI methods in carbon-neutrality research will be discussed.

Bio:

Prof. Weng is a Chair Professor of Geomatics and Artificial Intelligence and a Global STEM Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he directs Jockey Club STEM Lab of Earth Observations and Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Geomatics. Before that, he worked as the Director of the Center for Urban and Environmental Change and a Professor at Indiana State University, USA, 2001-2021. He currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief of ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and Lead of GEO’s Global Urban Observation and Information Initiative. Prof. Weng is a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe), and an elected Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, AAG, ASPRS, and AAIA. He has been honored with distinguished career awards that include NASA senior fellowship, AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors Award, Taylor & Francis Lifetime Achievements Award, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Short-term S[E]) Fellowship, and AAG Remote Sensing Specialty Group Lifetime Achievement Award. Weng’s research focuses on remote sensing and geospatial AI applications to urban environmental and ecological systems, urbanization impacts, urban climate and sustainability.

Title:

The Cost Saving, Climate, and Health Effects of Global Solar PV Supply Chains

Bio:

Dr. Gang He’s work focuses on energy systems, energy policy, and energy transition. His work has appeared in high-impact journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Energy, Applied Energy, One Earth, and Environmental Science & Technology. His research has been reported by Nature, Scientific American, National Geographic, E&E News, among others. He testified for the New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and has advised the New York State Climate Action Scoping Plan. He has also involved in the U.S.-China collaboration on energy and climate change. He received his Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from University of California, Berkeley.

Title:

Development of solar photovoltaic vacuum glass insulation layer of buildings

Abstract:

Insulation of exterior walls of buildings plays an important role for energy saving of buildings, especially in cold weather areas. For traditional insulation material, insulation board is easily damaged and fire accident happen as some materials are flammable. This presentation is to show a novel solar photovoltaic vacuum insulation building wall that integrates power generation, insulation, noise reduction and fire prevention functions. The vacuum glazing and low-emissivity (Low-e) coating in the insulation layer can significantly weaken convective and radiative heat transfers through the glass panel. As a result, the special wall has a very low comprehensive heat transfer coefficient (U-value) of 0.23 W/(m2K), which is 70.8% less than that of traditional insulated walls (0.79 W/(m2K)). The special insulation layer can also be used in Hong Kong for saving cooling load. Taking into account the reduction in electricity consumption for air conditioning and the amount of photovoltaic power generation, one square metre insulation-wall can generate economic benefits of about HK$290 per year and reduce CO2 emissions by about 120 kg.

Bio:

Prof. Yang is now working in Department of Building Environment and Energy Engineering of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Senior Editor of the International Journal of Applied Energy, and Senior Fellow of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. He is mainly engaged in the teaching and research of cutting-edge topics in renewable energy utilization and energy saving in buildings, including solar photovoltaic integration in building, solar air conditioning, wind energy development technologies. He has won the second prize of Science and Technology of the Higher Education Research Outstanding Achievement Award from Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and several Gold Medals from Geneva Invention Exhibitions. He and his group members have more than 330 SCI journal papers and 7 professional books published. He was on the list of the 2016-2020 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Scholars and has been the "Top 2% Global Top Scientists" in the field of "energy" announced by Stanford University since 2022.

Title:

Transport of CO2 and Hydrogen Two Mostly Underestimated Aspects of Sustainable Energy-and Process-Technologies

Abstract:

Carbon Capture(Utilization)and Storage-CCS or CCUS-and hydrogen-based technologies are two cornerstones of the developments of energy- and process-technologies without atmospheric CO2-emissions. Although both technologies are mostly discussed independently of each other, they are connected in multiple ways. A rapid implementation of hydrogen technologies will likely have to rely on blue hydrogen until sufficient green hydrogen becomes available. And the utilization of captured CO2 requires green hydrogen as the second main component in sustainable organic chemistry. Another similarity is that both chemicals need to be transported at large scale. And it turns out that this aspect becomes an important cost driver that can decide about the economic viability of process chains. In part, the challenges related to the development of multimodal transport-networks for CO2 and hydrogen are related to shortcomings regarding thermophysical property models for the involved fluids. This talk will highlight current efforts to overcome such limitations, how this work is reflected in the development of international standards, and where there are still open research questions.

Bio:

Roland Span studied mechanical engineering at Ruhr-University Bochum (RUB) from 1983 to 1988. In 1992, he completed his Ph.D. with a thesis introducing a new reference equation of state for carbon dioxide, which is still considered the international standard for thermodynamic properties of carbon dioxide. In 1999, he completed his habilitation. At ALSTOM Power Technologies in Switzerland, he worked on gas-turbine related topics. In 2002, he became chair of Thermodynamics and Energy Technologies at University of Paderborn. Since 2006, he is chair of Thermodynamics at RUB. Prof. Span published numerous journal articles and monographs, including highly cited scientific papers dealing mostly with experimental and theoretical work on thermodynamic properties and the application of corresponding models to process simulations in energy technologies. Prof. Span and his scientific co-workers received several national and international awards; examples for recent ones are the NTNU & SINTEF CCS Award 2019 and an ERC Advanced Grant dealing with thermodynamic properties of hydrogen in 2022. In 2023, Prof. Span was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Prof. Span is member of several scientific committees, including editorial boards and advisory boards in energy technology. As member of the management board of the JP CCS of the European Energy Research Alliance, Prof. Span is coordinating activities on CO2 transport. He is member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and chair of the International Advisory Board of the Institute of Thermomechanics of the Czech Academy of Science.