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Global warming combined with low carbon transition plans is threatening the future of high energy consumption industry sectors in the European Union (EU). The need to respond to environmental challenges is demonstrated by support for international level energy policies and legal requirements, such as the Kyoto Protocol which the EU supports, and increased EU-level environmental legislation and energy policies. The effect of these initiatives is gradually transforming industrial activities in the EU. However, since not all countries have adopted these policies, evaluation of their net effect needs to take account also of side-effects such as delocalization of industry activity and the legal environmental frameworks in the countries where companies have chosen to relocate. This paper analyses EU energy policy and its impact on a particular energy intensive industry, the European ceramic tile sector. The discussion in this paper is not about the purpose of EU legislation, but about its effects on a specific industry. The effect of policy on industry is not a new topic, but the question of the unwanted effects of environmental and energy policy on European industry is becoming more relevant as the struggle to achieve a post-carbon Europe increases. In focussing on a specific set of EU legislation on a particular industry this article adds to the debate by showing the negative effects of policy mechanisms. The need for a scientific evaluation of the systemic changes required for a transition to a resource-efficient, green and competitive low-carbon economy outlined in the 7th Environment Action Programme is highlighted. It is suggested that the EU should periodically re-evaluate its Emissions Trading Scheme legislation to include specific actions and a follow up system which would prevent the best performing environmental companies from delocalizing or shutting down.

Ceramic tile manufacture requires a great quantity of energy, mainly in the form of heat. The heat is principally used in the kilns and dryers, and it is obtained by natural gas combustion. The increasing cost of natural gas, as well as the application of a new gas tax, the new legislation in regard to emissions trading, and the difficult current economic situation have driven the ceramic tile sector to implement energy-saving actions in the production process with the twofold aim of reducing energy costs and abating carbon dioxide emissions. One such course of action is the European project REDUCER, funded by the European Commission and led by Azulev S.A.U., in which the Instituto de Tecnología Cerámica (ITC) also participates. This project seeks to implement energy-saving actions in company kilns and dryers in order to lower natural gas consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the tile manufacturing process. One of the saving actions envisaged is the installation of a system of waste heat recovery from one of the company kilns to the tile body dryers. This new waste heat recovery system is to be added to and will complement the already existing system at the company, thus achieving maximum heat recovery from the kiln stacks. The recovered heat will go entirely to the green tile body dryers, thus reducing natural gas consumption in the dryers. The designed installation seeks to recover 600 kW heat from the stacks of one of the kilns, entailing a natural gas saving of more than 120 k€/year and suppressing the emission into the atmosphere of 720 tons of CO2/year, savings that are to be added to those attained with other energy-saving measures. This paper describes the energy-saving actions implemented at the company, as well as the resulting energy savings.

Resumen del trabajo presentado al American Physical Society March Meeting, celebrado on-line del 15 al 19 de marzo de 2021. ; Work supported by Spanish MINECO (Grants FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER, EU) and PID2019-104604RB/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant ref. H2020-MSCA-IF-2016-746958. ; Peer reviewed

The knowledge of how magnetization looks inside a ferromagnet is often hindered by the limitations of the available experimental methods which are sensitive only to the surface regions or limited in spatial resolution. Here we report a vector tomographic reconstruction based on soft X-ray transmission microscopy and magnetic dichroism data, which has allowed visualizing the three-dimensional magnetization in a ferromagnetic thin film heterostructure. Different non-trivial topological textures have been resolved and the determination of their topological charge has allowed us to identify a Bloch point and a meron-like texture. Our method relies only on experimental data and might be of wide application and interest in 3D nanomagnetism. ; Alba light source is funded by the Ministry of Research and Innovation of Spain and by the Generalitat de Catalunya and by European FEDER funds. This project has been supported by Spanish MINECO under grant FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER, EU) and grant PID2019-104604RB/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. A.H.-R. and S.MV. acknowledge the support from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant ref. H2020-MSCA-IF-2016-746958. ; Peer reviewed

The magnetization reversal of each individual layer in magnetic trilayers (permalloy/NdCo/GdCo) is investigated in detail with x-ray microscopy and micromagnetic calculations. Two sequential inversion mechanisms are identified. First, magnetic vortex-antivortex pairs move along the field direction while inverting the magnetization of magnetic stripes until they are pinned by defects. The vortex-antivortex displacements are reversible within a field interval which allows their controlled motion. Second, as the reversed magnetic field increases, cycloidal domains appear in the permalloy layer as a consequence of the dissociation of vortex-antivortex pairs due to pinning. The field range where magnetic vortices and antivortices are effectively guided by the stripe pattern is of the order of tens of mT for the NiFe layer, as estimated from the stability of cycloid domains in the sample. ; Work supported by Spanish MINECO [Grants No. FIS 2013-45469 and No. FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER,EU)] and by FICYT-Asturias (Grant No. FC-GRUPIN14-040). We thank J. Avila (Alba staff) for assistance in the pulsed magnetic field set up. We thank Unidad de Medidas magnéticas y RMN de Sólidos de los Servicios Cientifico Técnicos of Universidad de Oviedo for the VSM characterization. A.H.-R. acknowledges the support from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant No. H2020-MSCAIF-2016-746958. ; Peer Reviewed

The development of magnetic nanostructures for applications in spintronics requires methods capable of visualizing their magnetization. Soft X-ray magnetic imaging combined with circular magnetic dichroism allows nanostructures up to 100–300 nm in thickness to be probed with resolutions of 20–40 nm. Here a new iterative tomographic reconstruction method to extract the three-dimensional magnetization configuration from tomographic projections is presented. The vector field is reconstructed by using a modified algebraic reconstruction approach based on solving a set of linear equations in an iterative manner. The application of this method is illustrated with two examples (magnetic nano-disc and micro-square heterostructure) along with comparison of error in reconstructions, and convergence of the algorithm. ; The following funding is acknowledged: Spanish MINECO (grant No. FIS2013-45469; grant No. FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER, EU); contract No. FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER, EU) to AHR); FICYT-Asturias (grant No. FC-GRUPIN14-040); US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory (contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 to DG); US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division (contract to CP). AHR acknowledges support from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (reference H2020-MSCA-IF-2016-746958). ; Peer Reviewed

This project has been supported by Spanish MINECO under grant FIS2016-76058 (AEI/FEDER, EU) and grant PID2019-104604RB/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. A.H.-R. and S.MV. acknowledge the support from European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant ref. H2020-MSCA-IF-2016-746958.

Spanish MINECO [FIS 2013-45469, FIS2016-76058]; FICYT-Asturias [FC-GRUPIN14-040]; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie [H2020-MSCA-IF-2016-746958]