1,720,971 research outputs found
Ex-ante economic and environmental analysis of manufacturing emerging thin-film photovoltaics
No full textIn recent decades, advancements in solar energy and photovoltaic (PV)
technologies have driven shifts in countries’ energy mixes. Consequently,
policymakers and scholars regard solar energy as an essential source to achieve
the energy transition goals from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and
mitigate the effects of climate change. This thesis revolves around evaluating
emerging PV technologies, focusing on their environmental and economic impact.
Previous empirical studies have attempted to estimate either emerging PV
technologies' economic or environmental performance. As these were conducted
separately, a holistic assessment of the developed technologies' economic and
environmental aspects is missing. This could hinder the identification of any
potential trade-offs between these aspects throughout the technology’s lifecycle.
Moreover, these evaluations lacked a comprehensive analysis that involved a wide
range of traditional single-junction (SJ) and novel tandem PV technologies to
obtain a harmonized analysis. In addition, regional differences were not
considered along with a long-term perspective, including technological
advancements, cost reductions resulting from learning effects, and shifts in
countries’ energy mixes. These factors could significantly affect the economic and
environmental impact performance of PV devices manufactured in specific regions.
This thesis seeks to address the limitations of previous research by integrating
environmental and economic assessments while promoting methods to improve
the impact assessment framework. This dissertation contributes to a better
empirical understanding of economic and environmental impact aspects of
emerging PV technologies. Firstly, the current solar energy context and PV
technologies, along with the economic and environmental impact studies that
have focused on emerging PV technologies, are outlined in the introduction. The
following chapters address the research goals of the thesis by (1) integrating
economic and environmental impact assessment to PV evaluation throughout the
lifecycle, (2) quantifying regional and systemic aspects of emerging tandem PV
technologies, and (3) proposing innovative methods to bridge the gaps between
experimental phase and impact assessments by linking modeling parameters to
experimental process conditions and impact assessment. Overall, this dissertation
provides insights into the potential of emerging PV technologies and offers a
framework for assessing their economic and environmental impact, ultimately contributing to the accelerated progress of PV technologies and the harmonization
of technical, economic, and environmental factors in evaluating emerging PV
technologies. Finally, the last chapter provides overarching conclusions,
recommendations, and routes for possible future research.
This thesis finds evidence that alternative thin-film tandem PV technologies
can compete with traditional silicon-based PVs and emerging perovskite/silicon
tandems regarding economic and environmental impact under similar lifetime
conditions of commercially available PV technologies and if high power conversion
efficiency is retained when upscaling to large-area PV devices. This may be
relevant for regions seeking to promote domestic PV manufacturing and
expanding solar energy deployment while diversifying the PV supply chain and
decreasing the carbon footprint impact of the PV industry. This dissertation finally
demonstrates the benefits related to the integration of machine learning methods
into economic and environmental impact assessments to bridge the gap between
the experimental phases of technology development and impact assessments with
the final goal of optimizing key performance metrics by varying experimental
process conditions
Ex-ante economic and environmental analysis of manufacturing emerging thin-film photovoltaics
No full textIn recent decades, advancements in solar energy and photovoltaic (PV)
technologies have driven shifts in countries’ energy mixes. Consequently,
policymakers and scholars regard solar energy as an essential source to achieve
the energy transition goals from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and
mitigate the effects of climate change. This thesis revolves around evaluating
emerging PV technologies, focusing on their environmental and economic impact.
Previous empirical studies have attempted to estimate either emerging PV
technologies' economic or environmental performance. As these were conducted
separately, a holistic assessment of the developed technologies' economic and
environmental aspects is missing. This could hinder the identification of any
potential trade-offs between these aspects throughout the technology’s lifecycle.
Moreover, these evaluations lacked a comprehensive analysis that involved a wide
range of traditional single-junction (SJ) and novel tandem PV technologies to
obtain a harmonized analysis. In addition, regional differences were not
considered along with a long-term perspective, including technological
advancements, cost reductions resulting from learning effects, and shifts in
countries’ energy mixes. These factors could significantly affect the economic and
environmental impact performance of PV devices manufactured in specific regions.
This thesis seeks to address the limitations of previous research by integrating
environmental and economic assessments while promoting methods to improve
the impact assessment framework. This dissertation contributes to a better
empirical understanding of economic and environmental impact aspects of
emerging PV technologies. Firstly, the current solar energy context and PV
technologies, along with the economic and environmental impact studies that
have focused on emerging PV technologies, are outlined in the introduction. The
following chapters address the research goals of the thesis by (1) integrating
economic and environmental impact assessment to PV evaluation throughout the
lifecycle, (2) quantifying regional and systemic aspects of emerging tandem PV
technologies, and (3) proposing innovative methods to bridge the gaps between
experimental phase and impact assessments by linking modeling parameters to
experimental process conditions and impact assessment. Overall, this dissertation
provides insights into the potential of emerging PV technologies and offers a
framework for assessing their economic and environmental impact, ultimately contributing to the accelerated progress of PV technologies and the harmonization
of technical, economic, and environmental factors in evaluating emerging PV
technologies. Finally, the last chapter provides overarching conclusions,
recommendations, and routes for possible future research.
This thesis finds evidence that alternative thin-film tandem PV technologies
can compete with traditional silicon-based PVs and emerging perovskite/silicon
tandems regarding economic and environmental impact under similar lifetime
conditions of commercially available PV technologies and if high power conversion
efficiency is retained when upscaling to large-area PV devices. This may be
relevant for regions seeking to promote domestic PV manufacturing and
expanding solar energy deployment while diversifying the PV supply chain and
decreasing the carbon footprint impact of the PV industry. This dissertation finally
demonstrates the benefits related to the integration of machine learning methods
into economic and environmental impact assessments to bridge the gap between
the experimental phases of technology development and impact assessments with
the final goal of optimizing key performance metrics by varying experimental
process conditions
The research path to commercialization: A perspective on plasmonic nanoparticles in organic and perovskite optoelectronics
No full textThe emergence of plasmonic nanoparticles in organic and perovskite optoelectronics has evolved beyond its role as a mere light emission and absorption enhancer, by delving into the exotic properties of semiconductor thin films. These properties include stimulated emission (lasing), coherent emission (superradiance), reversible spontaneous emission, and spontaneous synchronization leading to coherent emission. Despite the wealth of available fundamental knowledge, the commercialization of plasmonic nanoparticles in organic and perovskite optoelectronics such as light emitting diodes, photovoltaics and photodetectors, has yet to reach fruition. This paper reviews the technical challenges acting as barriers to commercialization and highlights how their solutions are influenced by economic, sustainability, and regulatory hurdles. A focused examination of technological challenges, including deposition, material compatibility, scalability, and reproducibility of the device performance, is presented. This perspective article concludes by proposing potential solutions and offering a future outlook for the field, emphasizing sustain-ability, the circular economy, and responsible electronics, alongside the continued advancement of fundamental knowledge.The authors would like to thank the UHasselt BOF funding grant number BOF21KP04 for supporting the work
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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