2035: verso quale energia? Meno petrolio più rinnovabili

Reblogged from Scienza in Rete

La storia ci ha dimostrato a più riprese quanto si riveli spesso erroneo basare le proprie scelte su previsioni numeriche, per quanto complesse, soprattutto se i protagonisti coinvolti giocano su scala mondiale e se la questione di cui si parla poggia le fondamenta su dinamiche dalla portata incommensurabile, come gli interessi economici, la finanza, la geopolitica.

Quello degli investimenti futuri legati alla domanda e alla produzione di energia è uno dei casi principe di questa difficoltà, e al contempo uno degli ambiti dove viene dipinto il maggior numero di scenari possibili, più o meno catastrofici. Per cercare di far convergere le statistiche elaborate fino a oggi, di recente l’International Energy Agency (IEA) all’interno del World Energy Outlook ha pubblicato un nuovo report speciale che cerca di tirare le fila su ciò che paiono raccontare i vari scenari che si prospettano per il nostro pianeta da qui al 2035.
A livello metodologico il dossier si caratterizza per lo sforzo di sintetizzare due scenari, considerati come i più significativi a cui fare riferimento: il New Policies Scenario e lo scenario 450: il primo, usato solitamente dall’IEA come riferimento, tiene conto degli impegni di massima delle politiche e dei piani nazionali che sono stati annunciati dai vari paesi, rispetto alla riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra, il secondo invece è uno scenario presentato nel World Energy Outlook che definisce un percorso energetico coerente con l’obiettivo di limitare l’aumento globale della temperatura a 2°C, limitando la concentrazione di gas serra in atmosfera di circa 450 parti per milione di CO2.

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Sustainable packaging: the next commitments for Italy

Reblogged from Science on the Net

Nowadays, the impact of packaging as a byproduct of the food industry fortunately has become a topic of much discussion when we discuss the ecological footprint of food chains. However, at the same time reducing the use of packaging in the production and distribution of food is not easy.

Between 2014 and 2015, Italy will play an important role in the debate on the sustainability of packaging systems: first, at the end of the current year will end a three-year project in which our country is a partner; furthermore, packaging should be one of the hottest topics of Expo 2015. The exhibition coincides with another international fair dedicated to the packaging industry: the IPACK-IMA trade fair.

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Italian physics and the Middle East

Reblogged from Science on the Net

On May 12, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and the International Centre for Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME) signed a scientific collaboration agreement. Aim of this cooperation is the development and implementation of Italian technology for the radio-frequency cavities for SESAME’s storage ring – radio-frequency cavities serve to re-supply the electrons with the energy they lose when emitting synchrotron light.

“SESAME is an ambitious project for the construction of the first synchrotron light source in the Middle East,” explains Giorgio Paolucci, scientific director of SESAME. “Today there are 12 synchrotrons in Europe (and a total of about 60 in the world) but none in the Middle East, although the need for them was recognized by eminent scientists such as the Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam about 30 years ago”. The Centre, which is intergovernmental, brings together Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority and Turkey (the Members), thus providing an extraordinary example of collaboration between entities with very diverse cultural, political and religious backgrounds.

“Perhaps the most significant feature of this project is that politics does not in any way interfere in the scientific research,” says Paolucci.

The project was born in the late nineties, thanks to the efforts of several scientists in and outside the region. These scientists proposed to use components of the BESSY I light facility in West Berlin, which was being decommissioned, to set up a synchrotron light source in the Middle East (following the re-unification of Germany it was decided to build a larger particle accelerator in East Berlin). The project then evolved and though a few of the BESSY I components, which have been greatly upgraded, are being used, SESAME is constructing a completely new 2.5 GeV storage ring, thus making it a state-of-the-art research centre.

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