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The Impact of Energy Storage Technologies on the Environment

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Part of the Environmental Science and Technology Library book series (ENST,volume 15)

Abstract

This chapter presents some challenging questions regarding the perceived impact of energy technologies on the environment and in particular the environmental impact of energy storage technologies. The questions raised are related to what it seems to be a too slow and possibly speculative reaction of the scientific community in addressing topics linked to global environmental problems. Hence, under public pressure and some times under panic created by popular mass media sources, such as the scare of depleting natural resources, top level executive managers and politicians are forced to take decisions subject to a great deal of uncertainty. It is not unusual for executives to take decisions under uncertainty conditions, however in the particular case of energy resources the not too far history since the first oil-price crisis in 1973 demonstrated the vulnerability of the present open society to unproven and unsubstantiated predictions of upcoming “catastrophes”. The consequent allocation of limited resources to avoid such “catastrophes”, which quasi-scientific prophecies predict, can adversely affect the scientific community‘s ability to provide correct and scientific answers and enhance our understanding of the natural phenomena involved. The next section deals with perceptions of energy related global environmental problems, followed by an introduction to energy storage technologies. The contrast between thermodynamic and techno-economical optimization methods, and the consequent information relevant to environmental impact are presented for a Compressed Air Energy Storage system, which was selected as a convenient example because of its hybrid characteristics and design flexibility, and because of the author‘s familiarity with this technology. The detailed thermodynamic and techno-economical analysis corresponding to this technology is presented by Vadasz [1].

Keywords

  • ASME Paper
  • Ozone Layer Depletion
  • Global Environmental Problem
  • Energy Storage Technology
  • Global Cooling Effect

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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References

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Vadász, P. (1999). The Impact of Energy Storage Technologies on the Environment. In: Bejan, A., Vadász, P., Kröger, D.G. (eds) Energy and the Environment. Environmental Science and Technology Library, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4593-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4593-0_12

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5943-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4593-0

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