GHG Emissions : Drivers, Sources and Impacts

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their impacts on global warming have become one of the key issues of major concern in this century. Numerous research efforts have been carried out to address this issue. Governments have been the key drivers for promoting the use of renewable energy for reducing GHG emissions. They have initiated a range of activities, campaigns and energy policies in recent years for meeting the required targets of renewable energy in their respective countries. This book provides the most recent research and development of technologies and analyses carried out by a number of outstanding researchers from various countries to address the issues of GHG emissions. A solar thermal system is presented in this book to show how it can be used to cool buildings while reducing the electricity demands from the grid. An energy storage system is shown to be able to reduce the peak demands and mitigate power quality issues caused by photovoltaic systems. Life cycles of the conventional solar power and geothermal power plants are described to show the amount of GHG emission to be avoided over the life cycle of these two renewable energy sources. Decomposition analysis of greenhouse gas is presented to show how the human population, economic growth and energy demand can influence GHG emissions. Techniques are presented in this book to describe the production of biofuel from biomass to reduce the use of conventional fossil fuels. Finally, the contribution of road transport to the GHG emissions is included in this book.