ENVIRONOMICS-DEFINITION, METHODOLOGY AND BEYOND

Hello readers! Hope you all are keeping safe and gradually returning back to your normal lives. Today, I will speak of a more environment-related topic, especially concerning the energy domain. 

All this began when a random thought started in my mind during a class. Can economics and environment be co-related? Does climate-change have a huge impact on the economy?

 

Introduction to Environomics

During the late 19th century (Post the industrial revolution), the globe saw intense exploitation of natural resources, such as coal. gasoline etc, in order to reap short-term benefits with minimal concern towards the future. Consequently, the economic failure behind nuclear plants, the alarming rise in the cost of oil barrels and the increased emission levels started to attract a lot of concerns from the global energy experts. Subsequently, the field of energy systems engineering saw rapid developments and improvements in the overall efficiency of the energy conversion process during the 1970-80 period, especially to develop alternate forms of energy for consumption in order to achieve sustainability. To aid the energy industry, fields such as thermoeconomics and exergoeconomics were merged together in order to understand the thermodynamic and economic considerations for further analysis and optimizations of the energy systems. This activity helped to decrease the pollution levels by a certain extent. However, sustainability had bigger plans and motives which was Environomics.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Christos A. Frangopoulos from the National Technical University of Athens proposed that for the analysis and optimization, departments have to consider the scarcity of the natural resources, resulting in pollutants and environmental degradations from the energy conversion processes being deployed, in addition to the financial and exergy factors. He later coined the term environomics. Mr Jagrat Mankat, a prominent industrial expert from the Birla family, later extended that environomics is a term which aimed at quantifying the environmental consequences and applying them with the other 2 factors to facilitate a better understanding of how to improve the energy systems and have synergy with the eco-system or in simpler terms express making sustainable partners between business and the environment.

For the quantification process, 3 major factors have to be taken into account:

1.        The scarcity of natural resources

2.        Environmental degradation

3.        Positive and Negative* social implications on the energy system¹

 

Methodology of Environomics

The output of environomics is represented by the function of the net total capital which involves the following:

1.        Metallurgical costs

2.    Manufacturing of equipment

3.        Construction of plant

4.        Maintenance and Running charges

5.        Dismantling of worn-out equipment

6.        Recycling of materials

7.        Freight Charges (Not at all situations)

8.        Social damage done to the environment during the above stages.

Therefore from a sustainable point of viewing the net capital of an energy system and its optimization related issues from synthesis, design, and operation can be mathematically put in the following equation:

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐂𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐭(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳)

=  𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐧(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳) + 𝐂𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐯(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳) + ∫ Ċ𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐯(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳)𝐝𝐭 + ∫ Ċ𝐫𝐞𝐬(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳)𝐝𝐭

− ∫ 𝐁(𝐱, 𝐰, 𝐳)𝐝𝐭

(All integrals have a lower limit of time) Wherein

x: independent variables w.r.t operation optimization (ex: mass flow rates, pressure rates etc) w: independent variables w.r.t design optimization (ex: nominal capacities, temp. of streams etc)

z: independent variables w.r.t synthesis optimization (only one variable for each component indicating if in an optimal state or not)

The first term, the internal general cost, represents the capital of the energy supply excluding the environment protection and raw materials cost. The second term, internal environmental cost, is the cost of the equipment installed exclusively for reducing pollution at various stages. The third term, internalized external environmental costs, includes all the external costs to quantify all the adverse effects on the environment and consequences on the society arising due to the energy system. The fourth term is principal costs which deal with the short-term costs such as scarcity of resources etc. The final term, system experiences, is the sales and profits gained.

 

Personal Reflections

The term environomics itself was quite new to me and also, the bibliographical references were quite low due to which, I was forced to give an extra round of reading in order to understand the crux of the concept and start writing this article. 

I was able to conclude at the end that Good environment creates a good business and yields good profits during long-time periods.

After giving an extra round of reading as mentioned-above, I was comfortably able to understand the concept and co-relate it to the current challenges in the Electrical domain and also better understand a couple of books I had earlier read such as “Energy Myths and Realities” by Vaclav Smil.

Vaclav Smil has once mentioned that "Sustainable is the most unsustainable word in Merriam webster"

I want to understand how sustainable we will be once we switch completely to EV’s and the challenges we would encounter to reach that stage, while considering the various compromises we should take into account.

As the saying goes “A new solution always induces a new question”, It raises a question in my mind as to how sustainable we would be with microgrids replacing the traditional electrical grid system. Also, an intricate reading about this topic raised other questions such as the possibility to include technologies like Power to Gas in such small areas and yet satisfying the thermoeconomic, exergoeconomic and environomic criteria.

All references will be mentioned in the comments section soon.

¹ *Examples of positive implications are the creation of new jobs, the welfare of the society etc Examples of negative implications are the effects of human health, increased infrastructure etc