We are living in a rapidly changing digital and technological world. Previously unimaginable, game-changing developments such as big data, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, the shared economy, and blockchain technologies are on the rise.
The Smart Energy and Carbon Management Program focuses on improving the capacity to manage carbon emissions from diverse sources, evaluating the impacts of emerging technologies on energy and GHG emissions, and developing policy recommendations and green finance mechanism for achieving the goals of the Paris climate agreement.
Our primary focus is twofold: The first is to advance the “Measurable, Reportable and Verifiable (MRV)” principle by using big data and smart technology to track, report, and manage GHG emissions from various transportation and industry sources, and design policy and innovative financing mechanism to solve the problems accordingly. The second part of our work is to evaluate the impacts of emerging digital mobility technologies, such as vehicle connectivity, autonomous driving, and shared mobility, on urban travel and energy use.
ADB “Developing a Climate-Friendly Cooling Sector through Market and Financing Innovation” Project
Carbon dioxide emissions from cooling sector account for 10% of the world’s total. As an alternative, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are widely used as refrigerants for refrigeration/air conditioning. Although they are harmless to the ozone layer, HFCs are a very strong greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) hundreds of times more than carbon dioxide (CO2). Moreover, its annual growth rate of emissions is 10%-15%, the fastest growing one among all types of greenhouse gases (GHGs). By 2050, its emissions will account for 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions if no effective measures are taken to reverse this trend. The Global Clean Energy Ministerial Conference promotes large-scale development and deployment of efficient, intelligent, climate-friendly and affordable cooling technologies. The team of experts led by iCET won the first place in the technical assistance bid of the Asian Development Bank project and will implement the project of “Developing a Climate-Friendly Cooling Sector through Market and Financing Innovation” in Ningbo as a pilot city.
Research Project on International Multi-Energy Integrated Microgrid System
The development of integrated energy microgrid in the context of Global Energy Interconnection is imperative, and the development of microgrid will also in turn promote the Global Energy Interconnection. The development of the US microgrid started earlier, and has achieved certain results in policy support, technology application, mechanism design, demonstration projects and business model. Therefore, the successful experience of the development of the US microgrid will greatly benefit Asia’s further promotion of integrated energy microgrid construction. Based on such situation, iCET conducted the research on international Muiti-Energy Intergrated microgrid system and delivered the report.
The research work reviews the history of microgrid development in the United States from the beginning of 2000 to the present, and is mainly divided into three parts: 1: Development of distributed energy microgrid system in U.S. This part focuses on research and analysis of the development status, operating model and market mechanism of the US microgrid, 2: Research on conversion control between grid-connected and islanded operation mode of microgrid.Taking the Global Energy Interconnection as the background, the research on 13 microgrid and off-grid operation mode switching control under large-scale renewable energy access is carried out, and the automatic / manual seamless switching method of microgrid / off-grid is proposed. 3. Case study of US microgrid demonstration project. Through a detailed analysis of three microgrid demonstration projects in the United States, the success of the US microgrid demonstration project is given from three aspects, and relevant policy recommendations are put forward.
