Two researchers from UNEP DTU Partnership joined the Young Energy Researchers Conference in Wels Austria this week, to present their research on batteries and behavioural biases.
The conference is part of World Sustainable Energy Days, one of Europe’s largest annual conferences in this field that brings together more than 700 delegates from over 50 countries from business, public sector and the research community.
Young Energy Researchers Conference presents the work and achievements of young researchers in the fields of biomass and energy efficiency, and offer an opportunity to interact with researchers and industry experts from all over the world.
Batteries or hydrogen
As part of the conference Aristeidis Tsakiris, Programme Officer presented his research on Hydrogen fuel cell and battery efficiency.
His conclusions are that from an energy and economic point of view batteries, for now, are a better technology. However concerns about battery capacity and range provide a technological incentive to further increase energy efficiency. Taking in to account that, electric vehicle motor efficiency depends on the load profile and system boundaries.
“There is a potential for hydrogen fuel cells to be successfully implemented to long-haul lorries, trains, and ambulances. Nevertheless, based on the current methods of producing, storing and converting hydrogen to electricity, the inefficiencies would limit the increase of share to the vehicle market,” he says.
The human bias in energy efficiency projects
Valeria Zambianchi, Research Assistant at UNEP DTU Partnership, is participating in the conference with a poster presentation on Addressing the energy efficiency gap with technical skills.
She is showing how the behavioural biases of technical labourers affect implementation of processes, and eventually limit the energy efficiency of projects.
“The biases are mainly related to mental shortcuts due to the lack of 100% rationality of the human being, which unfortunately is the assumption in many models. These biases can be addressed with educational activities, which should teach skills in an active way so that people know how to behave energy efficiently and why”, she says.
