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"Available online 13 March 2020, In Press" ; Brazil is one of the world key players in the mining industry. This sector has also a remarkable role on the Brazilian economic and social development. Nonetheless, the economic, social and environmental impacts of the sector have not yet been fully documented, debated or understood in reports presented by companies and public organizations in the country. In this context, this research aims to contribute to this debate by analysing sustainability in the Brazilian mining sector. For this research, the approach has used mostly a qualitative method, interviews, coupled with content analysis of reports of public mining agencies. Results showed that sustainability assessment and communication is still an emergent process in Brazilian mining, since only a few large companies have been reporting their sustainability initiatives. The results provide also evidence of the existing gap between large and small companies, with the latter showing lower levels of awareness of the impact of their activities. Based on these findings, this research has concluded on the need for closer cooperation between government, public mining agencies and companies to raise levels of knowledge and awareness within companies, towards sustainability practices and communication initiatives. ; The authors would like to thank to CAPES and Without Borders scholarship (Brazil), BEX Process 10.190-13-9 for providing financial support to this research. This work has been also supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, within the R&D Units Project Scope: ...

The topic Sustainable Development has brought a wide discussion across a number of sectors in our society, namely in Power Systems. Given the need to address other concerns than the economic ones, decision makers must take into account the rationale that lies beneath strategic choices, such as investing in generation technologies using renewable energy or rather doing business as usual and installing fossil fuel power plants. In this paper logic models were used as a decision-aid supporting tool, with the aim of contributing to the assessment of the possible impacts of different power plants in terms of sustainable development. The analyzed electricity generation technologies were grouped in thermal, renewable energy sources (RESs) and nuclear. The literature review fed the construction of three relational diagrams to allow the visualization of environmental, social and economic causes and effects of the three groups of technologies. Departing from these initial diagrams a set of interviews with experts was conducted to enrich and validate the logic models. The results of the literature review and of these interviews allowed to conclude that the use of RES has wider positive social impacts on the long run, despite their short-term higher costs compared to the traditional groups (nuclear and thermal). These logic models revealed to be a useful tool providing a valuable starting approach for an Impact Assessment of the ongoing change that power systems have been going through. ; This work was financed by the QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union – European Regional Development Fund and National Funds – Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) tool was designed and used to support the evaluation of different electricity production scenarios. The MCDA tool is implemented in a user-friendly Excel worksheet and uses information obtained from a mixed integer optimization model, to produce a set of optimal schemes under different assumptions. Given the input, the MCDA allowed ranking different scenarios relying on their performance on 13 criteria covering economic, job market, quality of life of local populations, technical and environmental issues. The MCDA tool was used by a group of experts and academics with background in economics, engineering and environment. Regarding the totality of results, both the most and least expensive scenarios ranked first the same amount of times. These scenarios were, respectively, "Coal", relying mainly in new coal power plants and "Maximum Renewable", relying mainly in new wind and hydro power facilities. The opinions were divided towards these two solutions with different fundamental characteristics: "Maximum Renewable" with costs higher than "Coal" but leading to substantial reduction of the external energy dependency. Sensitivity analysis suggests that, although the costs are regarded as the most important criterion, those who had different rankings in their preferences have different attitudes towards other criteria. ; This work was financed by: the QREN Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union e European Regional Development Fund and National Funds e Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01- 0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

The increasing uncertainty surrounding the electricity generating sector has implications on the forecasting accuracy and makes sensitivity analysis an essential tool for electricity power planning. The fuel price volatility and the emissions trading schemes represent major sources of uncertainty, as the relative economic interest of thermo power plants and of renewable energy sources largely depends on these two factors. In this paper, an electricity planning model will be used to analyse both these aspects, identifying the relative importance and sensitiveness of the optimal electricity power plans to changes on these parameters. ; QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, European Union – European Regional Development Fund and Portuguese Foundation for Science and ...

This paper focus on the assessment of the social dimension of electricity planning, resourcing to participative methodologies. A guide for interviewing power systems experts, covering a wide range of themes is presented. The guide focus on evolution of electricity consumption and supply according to each type of technology, driving forces among emerging technologies, energy policy, the relevance of sustainable development among institutions and markets and, finally, a first impression on the relevance of social impacts for candidate technologies. The main aim of the methodology is to gather discourses among experts and try to understand the connection between narratives and their consequences on the best scenarios under the social point of view. Therefore, the interview uses both uantitative and qualitative questions. The former are used for creating electricity generation scenarios within a 10 year range, while the latter aim at gathering each position's underlying explanations, which will be useful for cluster analysis in future work. The results presented in this paper refer to interviews which took place among the members of the working group of the project "Sustainable Electricity Power Planning". ; This work was financed by: the QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union – European Regional Development Fund and National Funds- Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01- 0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

The topic Sustainable Development has brought a wide discussion across a number of sectors in our society, namely in Power Systems. Given the need to address other concerns than the economic ones, decision makers must take into account the rationale that lies beneath strategic choices, such as investing in generation technologies using renewable energy or rather doing business as usual and installing fossil fuel power plants. In this paper logic models were used as a decision-aid supporting tool, with the aim of contributing to explain the connection between building a given power plant and assessing its possible impacts in terms of sustainable development. All the electricity generation technologies were grouped in thermal, renewable energy sources (RES) and nuclear. The literature review fed the construction of three technology generation groups inference and relational diagrams to allow the visualization of environmental, social and economic causes and effects. The results of the literature review and of a set of interviews with experts, based on the diagrams, allowed to conclude that the use of RES have wider positive social impacts on the long run, despite their short-term higher costs compared to the traditional groups (nuclear and thermal). ; This work was financed by: the QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union – European Regional Development Fund and National Funds- Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

This paper overviews previous research addressing the inclusion of the, social dimension of sustainable development on power systems planning. Consequences of the recent energy policies and strategies are already being felt in, developed countries' power systems, with the integration of rising quotas in renewable, energy technologies. However, while the tools that aid decision making on power, planning show that economic and environmental issues are easily quantifiable and thus, modeled, social concerns have been addressed in a less extensive and more, subjective way, implying in most cases expert participation on multi-criteria decision aid, techniques. A survey of recent papers providing public perceptions on electricity, generation technologies and projects is presented. These papers were chosen and, reviewed in order to present a representative array of methodologies that are used to, assess social acceptance of technologies. According to some of the reviewed papers, this issue is suggested to be fundamental to increase project success. As a conclusion, stands the fact that further discussion is still needed in order to achieve solid, agreement, among experts, over what are the positive and the negative drivers to, social sustainability; otherwise models will not be able to translate reality and improve it, under this point of view. ; This work was financed by: the QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union – European Regional Development Fund and National Funds - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

In a way to reduce the external energy dependence, increasing also the investments in renewable energy sources and aiming for the concretization of the European renewable objectives, the Portuguese government defined a goal of 5100 MW of installed wind power, up to 2012. If the drawn objectives are accomplished, by 2010 the wind power share may reach values comparable to leading countries like Denmark, Germany or Spain. The Portuguese forecasts also indicate a reinforcement of the natural gas fired generation in particular through the use of the combined cycle technology, following the European tendency. This analysis sets out to evaluate the total generating cost of wind power and CCGT in Portugal. A life cycle cost analysis was conducted, including investment costs, O&M costs, fuel costs and external costs of emissions, for each type of technology. For the evaluation of the externalities ExternE values were used. The results show that presently the wind power production cost is higher than the CCGT one, at least from the strictly financial point of view. CCGT costs increase significantly when charges for externalities are included. However, they only reach levels higher than the equivalents for wind power for high externality costs estimations. This partially results from the low load factor of the wind farms in Portugal and also from the lowemission levels of the gas fired technology used in the comparison. A sensitive analysis of the technical and economical parameters was also conducted. Particular attention was given to the natural gas prices due to the possible increase over time. The fuel escalation rate is the parameter that has larger effects on the final costs. It was verified that the total cost of wind plant is more influenced by the load factor than the total cost of ...

Renewable energy technologies are part of the solution to meet future increasing demand of electricity and decommissioning of power plants in the European Union. Public opinion surveys indicate general support of these technologies, but particular projects face local opposition, a phenomenon known in the literature as the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) hypothesis. In this study, the public opinion on renewable energy technologies was analyzed by means of a survey implemented in Portugal. The survey addresses four technologies: hydro, wind, biomass and solar power. The study has three main purposes: firstly, to recognize if the people acknowledges the existence of these technologies, secondly, to study the validity of the NIMBY hypothesis in Portugal while realizing in which technology it is more pronounced, and thirdly to perceive the levels of acceptance of each technology, under Sustainable Development aspects (Economy, Ecology and Society). The results suggest that acknowledgement of technology decreases with age, increases with educational degree and is greater in males. There is a generally positive attitude towards new projects of all technologies, and this tendency is more pronounced for solar power. Solar power plants are regarded by the Portuguese public as the most desirable technology in terms of economic and environmental aspects, while hydro power is perceived as the RES technology that can contribute the most to local residents' welfare. ; This work was financed by: the QREN – Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors, the European Union – European Regional Development Fund and National Funds- Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-011377 and Project ...

Electricity power planning is a serious national task that encompasses not only forecasts but more importantly the evolution in short, medium and long term of each element that composes the assumptions, the constraints and/or the parameters of the planning model. Deterministic models can bring simplicity to the electricity power planning but do not consider the uncertainties and sources of risk of the electricity system. On the other hand, stochastic models tend to include the behaviour of one or more uncertain parameters that are critical to obtain a robust solution, being however more detailed and lengthy than deterministic models. The aim of this work was to identify the major sources of risk and uncertainties facing electricity system, representing valuable input for the electricity planner task. From this study it can be observed that several different behaviours for each uncertain parameter can be found along a time horizon. Thus, it is concluded that reeling on average lowers can represent a reductionist approach and in order to obtain more reliable scenarios for future electricity system, the statistical characteristics of each parameter should be considered in the electricity power planning. ; This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Union Framework Programme, under project NETEP- European Brazilian Network on Energy Planning ...

The results of a state of the art review conducted so far, make clear the relevance of addressing the socio-economic return of public investment, in particular the support provided by the European Union programmes to R&D projects at national or regional level. However, according to the theoretical and empirical literature survey and, based on the experience and studies made in different countries and institutions, it seems that a formal appraisal of the socio-economic added value of these support programmes is ultimately needed. Besides that, the consultation of relevant experts and competent authorities seems to be an essential element for the evaluation process. This research work aims to present a participatory methodology that may be used to assess the social impact of the R&D programmes and their contribution to the general social welfare. Based on the literature survey and on the empirical analysis, a hierarchical set of attributes and measurable indicators was chosen in order to characterise qualitatively and quantitatively the R&D programme goals and achievements. These indicators were then presented to a group of experts, chosen from companies and national organisms directly involved in public programmes or in charge of projects supported by these programmes. The final output of this research is a proposal of a final ranking, indicating the relative importance of each attribute and of each individual indicator as a measure for the socio-economic added value of an R&D ...

This work seeks to evaluate overnight construction costs (OCC) and lead-time escalation of nuclear power construction projects from 1955 to 2016. To this end, a comprehensive database of commercial Light Water Reactors (LWR) was developed and a statistical analysis was conducted. Findings reveal a significant delay in lead-time, especially for the last generation reactors constructed from 2010s, with 3/4 of the sample showing significant construction delays. This results in an escalation of capital costs rather than in a decline. Average OCC of newer reactors is 60% higher than the ones implemented in the earlier stages of the nuclear era. This suggests a discontinuity of the learning curve for both OCC and lead-time, which threats the market and financial sustainability of current and future nuclear energy projects. Although this is a general trend, this discontinuity is country specific and, thus, induced by national policies and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, the role of nuclear technology as an alternative to cope with the need for a decarbonisation of the power sector must be better evaluated, taking into account the real cost impacts of nuclear technology implementation. ; - This work was funded by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development agency (CNPq) (166074/2015-2) and the Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Union Framework Programme, under the project NETEP- European Brazilian Network on Energy Planning (PIRSES-GA-2013-612263). Authors would like to acknowledge Rafael Garaffa for his helpful advices about processing data with R statistical software and data analysis. Authors are also thankful to the comments of anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to the Grantham Institute and Imperial College London media office for assisting in publicising the findings of the ...

Carbon capture and Geological storage (CCGS) is recognised as a technology capable of reducing large-scale emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is an important part of the portfolio of alternatives necessary to achieve significant reductions in the global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). As of this context where greenhouses gases constrains in Europe would come, and CCGS would be a mitigation option for GHG, it becomes necessary to develop a CO2 transport network to collect and inject it in a proper geological reservoir. Therefore, the following methodology can help to implement a pipeline network in any region in the world by doing a preliminary analysis about the best places to locate a HUB (temporary CO2 reservoir). In this paper, the demonstration of the methodology refers to Portugal's industrial emission sources in which CCS could be implemented. ; This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Union Framework Programme, under project NETEP- European Brazilian Network on Energy Planning ...

Carbon capture and geological storage (CCS) is a key technology for the World deep decarbonization. However, several challenges remain, such as the optimization of the carbon transportation infrastructures. This study proposes a methodology that applies the Kernel Density function in a geographic information system software and uses as input, CO2 emission sources data to identify emission clusters and emission high-density hotspots. The main goal of the proposed methodology is to perform a preliminary screening to identify areas of interest to install hubs when designing an optimized CO2 pipeline network. The methodology includes an estimation of capturable CO2 emissions and a density analysis that was based on Kernel Density function from the ArcGIS Desktop 10. The methodology was applied to the Iberian Peninsula CO2 industrial emission sources such as refineries, coal and natural gas power plants and cement factories (case study) and the results showed that in Portugal, CO2 industrial emissions reduction can reach up to 68% and, in Spain, up to 74% of CO2 industrial emissions, could be avoided. These are called capturable CO2 emissions which means that they are the portion of the total emissions that can be captured from industrial processes before they reach the atmosphere. Moreover, hubs were shown to be more viable when Portugal and Spain are considered together, therefore, carbon routes (pipeline network) in the future may consider an integrated route for the Iberian Peninsula. ; - Thanks to Professor Fernando Gomes Martins from the University of Porto. He supported and encouraged this work under the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000005 - LEPABE-2-ECO-INNOVATION, supported by North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).This research was supported, also, by a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Union Framework Programme, under project ...

This work seeks to evaluate overnight construction costs (OCC) and lead time escalation of nuclear reactors from 1955 to 2016. To this end, a comprehensive database of commercial Light Water Reactors (LWR) was developed and a statistical analysis was conducted. Findings reveal that there is significant delay in lead time, especially for the last generation reactors constructed from 2010's. This results in the escalation of capital costs rather than a decline. Average OCC of newer reactors are 60% higher than the ones implemented in the earlier stages of the nuclear era. This suggests a negative learning curve effect for both OCC and lead time, which threats the market and financial sustainability of current and future nuclear energy projects. Although this is a general trend, this negative effect is country specific and, thus, induced by national policies and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, the role of nuclear technology to cope with the decarbonisation of the power sector must be better evaluated, taking into account the real cost impacts of nuclear technology implementation. ; This work was also funded by the Brazilian research funding agency CNPq. ; This work was funded by the Brazilian research funding agency CNPq and the Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Union Framework Programme, under the project NETEP- European Brazilian Network on Energy Planning ...