Dénes Csala

Lancaster University | LU · Department of Engineering

The decision by Germany's Federal Council to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030 is at odds with the government's investment in renewable energy, which is not enough to produce the extra power that electric cars will need. We show how natural gas could plug the gap. Replacing internal-combustion vehicles with electric cars would reduce Ge...

A recent paper by Ferroni and Hopkirk (2016) asserts that the ERoEI (also referred to as EROI) of photovoltaic (PV) systems is so low that they actually act as net energy sinks, rather than delivering energy to society. Such claim, if accurate, would call into question many energy investment decisions. In the same paper, a comparison is also drawn...

In order to face resource depletion and climate change, society needs to move as quickly as possible to a renewable energy supply. Here, we argue that the transition can be seen as a process similar to the challenge faced by ancient farmers who had to save some of their harvest as seed for the next harvest. In the present case, during the initial p...

OPEN ACCESS @ http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/094009 Planning the appropriate renewable energy installation rate should balance two partially contradictory objectives: substituting fossil fuels fast enough to stave-off the worst consequences of climate change while maintaining a sufficient net energy flow to support the wo...

While partial energy transitions have been observed in the past, the complete transition of a fossil-based energy system to a sustainable energy one is historically unprecedented on a large scale. Switching from an economy based on energy stocks to one based on energy flows requires a social paradigm shift. This paper defines Sustainable Energy Tra...

This Special Issue focuses on proposing and analyzing systemic interdisciplinary approaches to support collaborative strategies and agreed-upon global sustainability policies toward addressing the challenges that lie ahead for our planet’s future. The contributions target applications in system dynamics, systems thinking, discrete event simulation,...

Climate change necessitates a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to increased climate risks. This broader climate transition will involve large-scale global interventions including renewable energy deployment, coastal protection and retreat, and enhanced space cooling, all of which will result in CO2 emissions from ener...

Time series modeling is an effective approach for studying and analyzing the future performance of the power sector based on historical data. This study proposes a forecasting framework that applies a seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous factors (SARIMAX) model to forecast the long-term performance of the electricity sec...

Pandemic-related shocks have induced an unexpected volatility into the evolution of online sales, making it difficult for retailers to cope with frequently occurring, drastic changes in demand. Relying on a socio-technical approach, the purpose of this paper is to (a) offer a deeper insight into the driving forces of online sales during the pandemi...

The topology of production networks determines the propagation mechanisms of local shocks and thus the co-movement of industries. As a result, we need a more precisely defined production network to model economic growth accurately. In this study, we analyse Leontief's input-output model from a network theory perspective, aiming to construct a produ...

The rapid growth of wind and solar energy penetration has created critical issues, such as fluctuation, uncertainty, and intermittence, that influence the power system stability, grid operation, and the balance of the power supply. Improving the reliability and accuracy of wind and solar energy predictions can enhance the power system stability. Th...

This study describes the Transylvanian literary ecosystem by analysing the relationships between the actors present in literary life. The authors seek to answer whether the oeuvre and perception of writers and poets were defined by their relationships, or rather, whether their relationships were formed by their grouping along common ideas and attit...

Climate change mitigation is one of the most critical challenges of this century. The unprecedented global effects of climate change are wide-ranging, including changing weather patterns that threaten food production, increased risk of catastrophic floods, and rising sea levels. Adapting to these impacts will be more difficult and costly in the fut...

We present preparenovonix, a Python package that handles common issues encountered in data files generated with a range of software versions from the Novonix battery-testers.1 This package can also add extra information that makes easier coulombic counting and relating a measurement to the experimental protocol. The package provides a master functi...

The member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are reliant on fossil fuels to generate electricity. Fossil fuels also represent the main source of economic income in the region. Climate change is closely associated with the use of fossil fuels, and it has become the main motivation driving the GCC countries to search for alternative sol...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) for fossil-fuel power plants is perceived as a critical technology for climate mitigation. Nevertheless, limited installed capacity to date raises concerns about the ability of CCS to scale sufficiently. Conversely, scalable renewable electricity installations—solar and wind—are already deployed at scale and have de...

Applying constant elasticity of substitution (CES) functions in general equilibrium integrated assessment models (GE-IAMs) for the substitution of technical factor inputs (e.g., replacing fossil fuels) fails to match historically observed patterns in energy transition dynamics. This method of substitution is also very sensitive to the structure of...

In order to face resource depletion and climate change, society needs to move as quickly as possible to a renewable energy supply. Here, we argue that the transition can be seen as a process similar to the challenge faced by ancient farmers who had to save some of their harvest as seed for the next harvest. In the present case, during the initial p...

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) are mainstay tools for assessing the long-term interactions between climate and the economy and for deriving optimal policy responses in the form of carbon prices. IAMs have been criticized for controversial discount rate assumptions, arbitrary climate damage functions, and the inadequate handling of potentially...

Masdar Institute PhD Qualifying Oral Exam

This paper investigates personal CO2 emissions and compares across a variety of estimation approaches. We survey various online personal emissions estimators and point out their differences. Further we analyze consumption and production-based emissions across different income bands and study the scale of CO2 emissions by the world’s billionaires....

The purpose of this project was to create and simulate an efficient algorithm which would navigate a number of agents in the Jiao Tong (JT) multi-agent world and attempt to maximize its payoff. We have created an expert algorithm ( Xala) mainly driven by adaptive greedy-learning and system dynamics-style feedback processes.

In this paper we investigate the social dynamics that may drive social unrest events. While this has been extensively studied recently and the general patterns regarding the distribution of event-sizes and timings are well-known, we delve deeper into the problem and attempt to gain an insight into individual event dynamics. Using an event classific...

The transition from a fossil-based energy economy to one based on renewable energy is driven by the double challenge of climate change and resource depletion. Building a renewable energy infrastructure requires an upfront energy investment that subtracts from the net energy available to society. This investment is determined by the need to transiti...

The air transportation system needs to change drastically if it is to transition into a sustainable state. The stakes for the needed technology-driven change – innovation –are extremely high for the lead adopters given the high cost of R&D in manufacturing and the need to change parts of the existing infrastructure and operational procedures if a s...