Steve Griffiths

American University of Sharjah | AUS

This paper explores the benefits, barriers, and justice impacts of industrial decarbonization via hydrogen and carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) via European industrial firms located in UK clusters.

Energy and mobility poverty limits people's choices and opportunities and negatively impinges upon structural economic and social welfare patterns. It also hampers the ability of planners to implement more equitable and just decarbonization pathways. Research has revealed that climate policies have imposed a financial burden on low-income and other...

Poverty impacts people’s choices and opportunities and can perpetuate a disadvantaged status. Poverty remains a prevalent global issue due to disproportionate wealth distribution, which often translates to inequality in energy consumption and emissions. This research investigates if low-income households and minorities from four countries with very...

In this paper, the feasibility of satellite remote sensing in detecting and predicting locations of buried objects in the archaeological site of Saruq al-Hadid, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was investigated. Satellite borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is proposed as main technology for this initial investigation. In fact, SAR is the only satel...

Concrete is the most highly used construction material globally. This is largely due to its durability, versatility and manufacture from inexpensive and readily available materials. Although concrete has become an essential and ubiquitous construction material for modern society, its use has significant environmental impacts. The full cement and co...

Chemicals, essential materials for modern life, emit substantial greenhouse gases during production and use. Like the other carbon-intensive industries, the chemical industry is a complex and diverse industry to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonizing the chemical industry is critical to overcoming the climate crisis and building a sustain...

Energy and transport poverty have been postulated as conditions linked by overlapping causal factors such as structural economic inequality or housing stock and affecting overlapping demographics such as family size or income. The strength of the overlap of these conditions and their causal mechanisms has not been assessed across Ireland prior to t...

Paper has shaped society for centuries and is considered one of humanity's most important inventions. However, pulp and paper products can be damaging to social and natural systems along their lifecycle of material extraction, processing, transportation, and waste handling. The pulp and paper industry is among the top five most energy-intensive ind...

Natural gas is an important and highly flexible fuel across the industry sector globally. It provides fuel and energy services for both heat and power, and is also as a key feedstock in many industrial processes. Natural gas-based industrial technologies typically have lower capital costs, operating costs, and electricity consumption than coal-base...

The oil refining industry, which was established in the mid-19th century, has become a foundation of modern society. While the refining of crude oil to produce transportation fuels, petrochemical feedstocks and a variety of other products has brought manifold benefits, it has also led to the global proliferation of greenhouse gas emissions as well...

The iron and steel industry is the largest coal consumer and the most greenhouse gas intensive industry. It consumes about 7% of global energy supply, and conservative estimates report that it is responsible for 7–9% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Decarbonization of the iron and steel industry is thus vital to meet climate change mitigation ta...

Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region are far off the trajectory required to stabilise the global climate. Being responsible for about threequarters of greenhouse gas emissions, the energy system has to bear most of the burden of the decarbonisation effort. In such a context, this report identifies three pillars that need im...

Ceramics are considered one of the greatest and earliest most useful successes of humankind. However, ceramics can be highly damaging to natural and social systems during their lifecycle, from material extraction to waste handling. For example, each year in the EU, the manufacture of ceramics (e.g., refractories, wall and floor tiles and bricks and...

Smart home technologies (SHT) refer to devices that provide some degree of digitally connected, automated, or enhanced services to household occupants. Smart homes have become prominent in recent technology and policy discussions about energy efficiency, climate change, and the sustainability of buildings. Nevertheless, how might culture shape the...

Glass is a material inextricably linked with human civilization. It is also the product of an energy intensive industry. About 75%–85% of the total energy requirements to produce glass occur when the raw materials are heated in a furnace to more than 1500 °C. During this process, large volumes of emissions arise. The container and flat glass indust...

Industrial decarbonization is a daunting challenge given the relative lack of low-carbon options available for “hard to decarbonize” industries such as iron and steel, cement, and chemicals. Hydrogen, however, offers one potential solution to this dilemma given that is an abundant and energy dense fuel capable of not just meeting industrial energy...

Natural gas plays an important role in the global energy system. Thus, optimizing trade in natural gas is a key concern for many countries. This study investigates the value of expanding the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) natural gas grid. We consider the documented successes and failures of the regional gas trade in Europe and Asia and weigh the...

From farm to fork, food and beverage consumption can have significant negative impacts on energy consumption, water consumption, climate change, and other environmental subsystems. This paper presents a comprehensive, critical and systematic review of more than 350,000 sources of evidence, and a short list of 701 studies, on the topic of greenhouse...

Humanity has come to depend on synthetic, factory made gases that have extremely significant global warming potential. Fluorinated greenhouse gases, or F-gases, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) have been termed “super pollutants” and “super greenhouse gases” given...

Smart home technologies refer to devices that provide some degree of digitally connected, automated, or enhanced services to household occupants. Smart homes have become prominent in recent technology and policy discussions about energy efficiency, climate change, and the sustainability of buildings. Nevertheless, do they truly promote sustainabili...

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to have lasting impacts on energy and the environment at the global scale. Shelter-in-place measures implemented to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in expectations for 2020 global energy demand to contract by nearly 5% with related global CO2 emissions declining by as much as 7%. Exactly how lon...

The global Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly overwhelmed our societies, shocked the global economy and overburdened struggling health care systems and other social institutions around the world. While such impacts of Covid-19 are becoming clearer, the implications of the disease for energy and climate policy are more prosaic. This Special Section seeks...

How does culture influence low-carbon energy transitions? How can insights about cultural influences guide energy planners and policymakers trying to stimulate transitions, particularly at a time of rapid technological change? This Review examines the influence of culture on a selection of low-carbon technologies and behavioural practices that refl...

As the global trend toward urbanization continues, new models for the design and governance of sustainable cities are being developed. The Abu Dhabi government announced in 2006 its intent to spend $22 billion to build one such city, Masdar City, as a carbon-neutral, zero-waste city that would demonstrate the state-of-the-art in sustainable city de...

A porous composite of 3-dimensional (3D) reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and silica dioxide nanoparticles (PrGO-SN) was synthesized via a single-step hydrothermal process, which can initiate facile ice nucleation and growth starting from temperature as high as - 8 oC and 5 – 8 % RH supersaturation and sustain rapid ice crystal growth. The excellent ic...

This review focuses on how culture can complicate and impede attempts at promoting more efficient, more sustainable, and often more affordable forms of mobility as well as energy use in homes and buildings. In simpler terms: it illustrates the cultural barriers to a low-carbon, low-energy future across 28 countries. Rather than focus on energy supp...

The global energy system is undergoing a transition away from a nearly complete dependence on fossil fuels toward a greater reliance on clean and renewable energy sources. Because this low-carbon energy transition will fundamentally alter the relationship between energy producers and consumers, its geopolitical ramifications are now a key concern o...

This article summarizes the results of a longer analysis of the UAE policy process that utilized the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) platform, a model of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs), to evaluate the political feasibility of six different policy options that could...

This report looks at the country’s current renewable energy context, including existing strategies, regulations and policies that have been put in place at both the federal and emirate-levels, to support the transition towards renewable energy. It also looks at the changing economics of renewables and successes of renewable energy implementation in...

Here, we use a bottom-up approach to estimate the manufacturing costs of GaAsP/Si dual junction (DJ) solar cells, fabricated using step-cell technology. Step-cell features facilitate fast epitaxial lift-off while at the same time can be used to optimize tandem cell performance. The estimated step-cell costs are compared with commercially available...

Cloud-seeding materials as a promising water-augmentation technology have drawn more attention recently. We designed and synthesized a novel type of core/shell NaCl/TiO2 (CSNT) particles with controlled particle size, which successfully adsorbed more water vapor (～ 295 times at low relative humidity, 20 % RH) than that of pure NaCl, deliquesced at...

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said it wishes to transition toward a less carbon-intensive energy system, both as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as one of a number of investments in ‘green’ research and development, technology and power generati...

Policies to support the deployment of renewable energy technologies have been widely established for power generation, heating, cooling, and transportation. However, as renewable energy technologies have become increasingly cost-competitive and more widely deployed, policymakers have begun to focus their attention on the adaption of existing polici...

https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/oxford-energy-forum-mena-energy-pricing-reforms-issue-108/

The energy landscape of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has undergone a significant transformation in recent years as a result of intersecting technological, economic and political trends, both regional and international. The evolving dynamics of international energy markets, increased diversification of energy sources, global concer...

MASDAR: The emergence of unconventional hydrocarbons, such as methane hydrates, may have a major future impact on bilateral trade relations between the countries of Northeast Asia (NEA) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In this paper, the historical energy trade relationship between the two regions is examined as well as the evolution and sci...

Solar power, and in particular solar photovoltaics (solar PV), is a rapidly growing source of energy in many regions of the world. However, the contribution of solar power in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has been minor even though these countries possess some of the best levels of solar insolation globally. Recently, though, this h...

MASDAR: The emergence of unconventional hydrocarbons, such as methane hydrates, may have a major future impact on bilateral trade relations between the countries of Northeast Asia (NEA) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In this paper, the historical energy trade relationship between the two regions is examined as well as the evolution and sci...

MH development influence on natural gas trade dynamics.

The rapid population growth and economic development in the U.A.E.; brought on by a sharp rise in oil revenues; has led to increased urbanization and industrialization. Consequently, the energy demand has augmented, at present consumption rate an energy supply-demand deficit is eminent by 2030. The country has begun working, both on increasing its...

The rapid population growth and economic development in the U.A.E.; brought on by a sharp rise in oil revenues; has led to increased urbanization and industrialization. Consequently, the energy demand has augmented, at present consumption rate an energy supply-demand deficit is eminent by 2030. The country has begun working, both on increasing its...

We conduct a comprehensive mapping and cost analysis of the renewable energy (RE) technology options available to the United Arab Emirate’s (UAE) energy system. Based on projected demand and the true (unsubsidized) costs of fossil fuel supply, the substitution cost of each option and its respective potential is estimated. We demonstrate that a sign...

Demand for electrical power across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is growing rapidly because of rising population, growing urbanization, and economic growth driven by industrialization. The objective of this paper is to analyze the market requirements and trends for the different types of fuels and power generation technologies that...

Shale gas resources are proving to be globally abundant and the development of these resources can support the geologic storage of CO2 (carbon dioxide) to mitigate the climate impacts of global carbon emissions from power and industrial sectors. This paper reviews global shale gas resources and considers both the opportunities and challenges for th...

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), despite its small size, is emerging into an influential player in global energy geopolitics. Perhaps counter intuitively, the UAE can successfully leverage a sustainable energy transition to strengthen its position as a global energy leader while providing tangible economic and environmental benefits. To be executed...

Energy strategy encompasses the analysis, planning, decision making, and practical steps required to transition from a present to future energy system. The context for energy strategy can be local, national, regional, or global. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) comprises a group of nations that have traditionally played a key role in the glo...

The futuristic environment-friendly oasis of Masdar City near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) demonstrates significant sustainability. Solar power meets residents' energy needs and buildings are extremely energy efficient. The developers of the city plan to make it one of the most sustainable cities in the world, by lowering carbon emissions...

As the United Arab Emirates is diversifying its energy sources, it is increasingly looking towards solar photovoltaic technology as a viable option. A key factor in promoting this option is the capability to forecast financial viability of solar projects. This paper uses stochastic analysis instead of deterministic analysis and applies it on potent...

The objective of this study is to investigate the different technology strategies for companies in the solar and wind industries given the dynamics of the renewable energy industry in general. We will investigate how these companies are creating value, capturing value, and delivering value. We looked at the internal and external factors that drove...

Oxidative damage to the sulfur-containing amino acids, methionine and cysteine, is a major concern in biotechnology and medicine. alpha1-Antitrypsin, which is a metastable and conformationally flexible protein that belongs to the serpin family of protease inhibitors, contains nine methionines and a single cysteine in its primary sequence. Although...

alpha 1-Antitrypsin is a metastable and conformationally flexible protein that belongs to the serpin family of protease inhibitors. Although it is known that methionine oxidation in the protein's active site results in a loss of biological activity, there is little specific knowledge regarding the reactivity of each of the protein's methionine resi...

A peptide mapping procedure was developed to identify and quantify methionine oxidation in recombinant human alpha1-antitrypsin. Due to the protein's complex structural biochemistry, chromatographic analysis of methionine containing digest peptides was a significant challenge. However, by using a combination of mass spectrometry, protein engineerin...