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PHYSICS
We want to start by apologizing. In the last presentation we promised you we would bring at least one model of a functional electric car and yet we failed you and we are truly sorry for it. Nevertheless, we had to bring something to you, and we did. In this presentation we will give more details about the components we will use in our models and the physics and chemistry behind them.
Our main idea is to build at least one model of an electric car but hopefully we can bring 2 of them, these models would be composed by 2 key components and the ones we will explain today:
An electric motor and a source of energy. The only thing it would differ between models is their energy source, as the motor would be the same.
My colleagues will now bring 2 ideas of sources of energy we might use in our models.
First we have solar panels:
SOLAR PANNEL
A solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to knock electrons free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity. Solar panels are actually comprised of many smaller units called photovoltaic cells. (Photovoltaic simply means they convert sunlight into electricity.) Many cells linked together make up a solar panel. Each photovoltaic cell is basically a sandwich made up of two slices of semi-conducting material, usually silicon.
To work, photovoltaic cells need to establish an electric field. Much like a magnetic field, which occurs due to opposite poles, an electric field occurs when opposite charges are separated. To get this desired field, the manufacturers fill the silicon with other materials, giving each slice of the sandwich a positive or negative electrical charge.
More specifically, they fill the top layer of silicon with phosphorous, which adds extra electrons, with a negative charge, to that layer. Meanwhile, the bottom layer gets a dose of boron, which results in fewer electrons, or a positive charge. This all becomes the desired electric field at the junction between the silicon layers. Now, when a photon of sunlight knocks an electron free, the electric field will push that electron out of the silicon junction. After this happens, a couple of other components of the cell turn these electrons into usable power. The metal conductive plates on the sides of the cell collect the electrons and transfer them to wires. From that point on, the electrons can flow like any other source of electricity.
Recently, researchers have produced ultra-thin, flexible solar cells that are only 1.3 microns thick, which is about 1/100th the width of a human hair and are 20 times lighter than a sheet of office paper. In fact, the cells are so light that they can sit on top of a soap bubble, and still, despite being so small, they produce energy with about as much efficiency as glass-based solar cells, scientists reported in a study published in 2016 in the journal Organic Electronics. Lighter, more flexible solar cells such as these could be integrated into architecture, aerospace technology, or even wearable electronics. There are other types of solar power technology that operate in a different fashion than photovoltaic solar panels, but they all share the fact that they harness the power of sunlight to either create electricity or to heat water or air.
SALTWATER BATTERY
The other source of energy that we might use is a saltwater battery.
This saltwater battery consists of:
The dissolved salt in the water separates into positive and negative ions, which makes the electrical conductivity (which means that if a material is more conductive the less resistance it shows to current flow) of the salted water considerably higher than normal water. The resistance then translates into energy dissipation, which in this case, is heat.
This battery follows Alessandro Volta’s rules, as we explained in the last presentation, but basically says that if we combine two different metals, there will be exchange of electrons between them, one being negatively charged and the other one positively charged. With this, one of the metals will attract the positive ions and the other metal will attract the negative ions, in which we can call this a redox reaction.
Since we also have a connected cable, we will have voltage between the two metals (around 0,8 V), creating an electrical current that will give power to the car, but why is this?
To better explain this phenomenon, think of 2 water cups that are connected to a tube. If you put water in one of the cups, water will flow through the tube, which will create a balance between the two cups. If you add water to that balance, part of the water will flow through the tube until both cups have the same amount of water.
If we compare this experiment to what we are talking about, think of the cups as the metals, the tube as a conductive cable, water as electric charge, electric current as the water flow. If we wanted to power something, which in our case, will be the car, it would be like a turbine that is placed in the tube, that would move when the water is flowing.
Interesting facts:
Although one cup is probably enough to create the energy needed to make the car move, if we wanted to add more energy, we would need more cups, which would need to be added in series, just like on an electric circuit, so that voltage increases (electric current however does not; for that we would need an ionic solution that has higher electrical conductivity).
This battery cannot last forever because redox reactions at some point, would stop occurring as, after some time, the metals would be oxidized. This can be solved however by sanding the metals, but you need to keep in mind that this is not an unlimited process as at some point, you will run out of metal to sand.
You can do this battery using cold water, but if you use hot water, the internal energy of the system will increase. This occurs because when we are heating water, although the internal gravitational energy would stay the same, the internal kinetic energy will increase, as the molecules of water will start to move faster. More internal kinetic energy equals to faster redox reactions, which will increase the energy output.
It is not recommended to keep the metals always immersed in the saline solution when the battery is not being used because the redox reactions will continue to exist, creating a layer of oxides on the metals. Such oxides are bad conductors and their arrangement in the electrodes will create a gradual insulating protection in metals, preventing the circulation of electric current.
DC MOTOR
Although each model will have different sources of power, they will both have the same motor this one being a DC motor. You might be wondering why we went with DC motors since in the last presentation we covered ac motors more specifically the induction motor of the Tesla Model S. The answer is simplicity. The purpose of these models and of the project itself is not to show off our amazing engineering skills rather is to raise awareness. With this in mind we thought it would be simpler to use a dc motor since with for example an induction motor we would need an inverter to transform dc current into ac current as both sources of energy we will use will give as direct current.
Before I start explaining how a dc motor works, I first need to address that for the better understanding we will cover the most simple DC motor. As in AC motors DC motors are composed by 2 core components the stator and the rotor. Although more complex DC motors will have sets of coils as stators just like in the induction motor, simpler and smaller dc motors, probably the ones we will use, will have permanent magnets as stators. These permanent magnets will then create a magnetic field inside of the stator, the same would happen with the sets of coils since these would be connected by an electric current which then will create an induced magnetic field according to the Faraday’s Law just like in the induction motor. The rotor which stays inside the stator is composed of many components of it’s own. First, we have the copper windings, these are connected to a commutator which will be in direct contact with 2 spring loaded brushes. These brushes will be the ones who the electric current will flow through. Since we will have an electric flowing through the copper windings it will create an induced magnetic field which will interact with the one of the stator, consequently making all of the rotor rotate. Each time the brushes make contact with different commutator segments the polarity of the circuit will reverse which will reverse the polarity of the induced magnetic field as well. This reversing of the polarity will continue to happen creating a continuous rotation of the rotor. Concluding while the induction motor relied on its alternating current to reverse the polarity of the induced magnetic field to then make it rotate the DC motor runs on a constant voltage, so it needs the commutator and the brushes to “manually” reverse the polarity of the circuit. Something to keep mind is that with time the brushes will start to wear off which will require them to be replaced for the well-functioning of the motor.
And that finishes our physics project to this term, and we hope you got to know more about what we want to bring in our models.
English
One thing that helped increase the electric cars industry growth was the governmental approach to such industries. This was just an example in how good environmental policies are helping the world, a topic we will now discuss. But before that what is an Environmental policy?
Environmental policies are any measures created by a government or corporation or other public or private organization regarding the effects of human activities on the environment, especially the measures that are designed to prevent or reduce the harmful effects of human activities on all of the ecosystems.
Despite not being talked about much (which is just wrong to be right while saying this because it clearly shows how little attention this stuff gets from us), these policies are needed because environmental values are usually not considered in organizational decision making. What I mean by this, is that when decisions have to be made, the way that a certain person or country looks/treats the environment is not taken into consideration at all. This happens for 1 of 2 reasons. First, environmental effects are considered economic externalities. What this means is that whenever a certain good is produced, no one directly pays for the effects it has. For example, polluters do not usually bear the consequences of polluting, which will most likely be felt either somewhere else or in the future. Second, natural resources are almost always underpriced for often being assumed to have infinite availability. Together, these 2 factors form what is commonly called as the "tragedy of the commons", which is the conflict between individual and collective rationality.
For a normal person, it is rational for them to use a common resource without taking into consideration the limitations of its production. However, that self-interested behavior will lead to the depletion of that shared limited resource—and that is not in anyone’s interest. Still, people do act on behalf of their self-interest, because they reap the benefits in the short-term. What happens next? The community pays the costs of the depletion of that resource in the long term.
HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY MAKING
Question?? How long ago do you guys think that policies for the protection of the environment were created?
Well, public policies aimed at environmental protection date back to ancient times! How? The sewers! The earliest sewers date back to around 4500 years ago, and the sewers of Rome, which were pretty much the next ones that we have records of being built, were built around 2700 years ago. Other kinds of laws were implemented in the old times aside from sewer construction. Around 2300 years ago, the ancient Greece created laws that served as protection of the forests, limiting the ammount of forest that could be harvested, and some feudal European societies established laws that put a limit on hunting and wood gathering from the forests, either at all, or reserved to Royalty, therefore controlling the environment with a firmer grip.
Many other laws were created, and some more followed and respected than other along the way. From the late 1980´s, sustainable development, which is the creation of economic growth while preserving the quality of the environment for future generations, became one of the leading concepts in environmental policy making. With this, the governments stopped being the only ones responsible for the environment. Private industries and nongovernmental organizations assumed greater responsibility for the environment and this concept of sustainable development ended up emphasizing that individuals and communities played a big role in the implementation of these policies.
GUIDING CONCEPTS
Over the years, a variety of principles have been developed to help guide policy makers. Examples of these guiding principles are the "polluter pays" principle, which in essence make polluters liable for the costs of environmental damage, and the "precautionary principle", which states that some activities are not allowed if there is a chance that the consequences are irreversible.
However, such straightforward guiding principles do not work in all situations. For example, some environmental challenges, like the global warming, emphasize the need to view Earth as an ecosystem consisting of various subsystems, which, once disrupted, can lead to rapid changes that are beyond human control. Applying the guiding principles that I mentioned before would not necessarily roll back the damage already imparted to the biosphere. It would, however, reduce future damage. Since the early 1970´s, environmental policies have changed from "end of pipe" solutions, to "prevention and control". These solutions rely on the mitigation of negative effects. In addition, if a negative effect is unavoidable, it can be compensated for by investing in nature in other places different than where the damage was caused, for example.
There is also a third solution, where policies that focus on adapting the living environment are developed. In other words, these policies would be measures that reinforce an ecosystem´s ecological resilience, which is the ecosystem´s ability to maintain it´s normal patterns of nutrient cycling and biomass production.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INSTRUMENTS
Lots of instruments have been developed to influence the behavior of actors who contribute to environmental problems. Traditionally, public policies have focused on regulation, financial incentives, and information as the tools of government. However, new policy instruments such as performance requirements and tradable permits have been used.
REGULATION
Regulation is used to impose minimum requirements for environmental quality. This sort of intervention aims to encourage or discourage specific activities and their effects, involving particular emissions, particular inputs into the environment, ambient concentrations of chemicals, risks and damages, and exposure. In many cases, local and regional governments are the issuing and controlling authorities. Still, more-specialized or potentially hazardous activities are more likely to be controlled by a federal or national authority.
In essence, regulation is an effective means to prescribe and control behavior. Some of these regulations have resulted in a considerable improvement in the quality of air, water and land since the early 1970s. The strengths of regulation are that it is generally binding, which means that it includes all who want to undertake an activity described in the regulation. Regulations are also rigid, which means that they are difficult to change. This can be considered as a strength, since rigidity ensures that regulations will not change too suddenly. However, rigidity can also be considered a weakness, because it slows down innovation, as actors seek to stay within the letter of the law rather than creating new technologies, such as more-efficient emission scrubbers on smokestacks that would remove more pollution than what the regulation mandates.
One big improvement in environmental regulation made since the 1970s is the development of performance requirements, which allow actors to determine their own course of action to meet the standard. For example, they are not required to purchase a particular piece of equipment to meet an emissions standard. They can do it another way, such as developing a technology or process that reduces emissions. The advantage of performance requirements is that actors addressed by the regulation are encouraged to innovate in order to meet the requirements. Despite that advantage, performance requirements cannot keep actors who lack incentives from achieving more than the minimum requirements. One solution for this would be, for example, financial incentives.
FINANCIAL INCENTIVES
Governments can decide to stimulate behavioral change by giving positive or negative financial incentives. These incentives can play an important role in boosting innovation and in the diffusion and adoption of innovations. For example, in Germany the widespread subsidizing of solar energy systems for private homeowners increased the large-scale adoption of photovoltaic panels.
We will now show you data from the CCPI (Climate Change Performance Index) but first we need to explain how their calculations are made. Firstly, the CCPI evaluates 4 different categories: Climate Policy, GHG Emissions, Renewable Energy and Energy use each with categories of their own and each with their respective percentage in the final result as seen in this graph. The three categories “GHG Emissions”, “Renewable Energy” and “Energy Use” are also defined by four indicators (recent developments, current levels, 2°C compatibility of the current performance and an evaluation of the countries' 2030 targets in the respective categories). With this methodology, the CCPI covers the evaluation of the countries’ promises as well as their current progress in terms of climate protection. Furthermore, CCPI ranking indicators are qualified in relative terms, in this case better to worse, rather than absolute terms. With this out of the way we can now show you the data, but for more information please check our sources, these are the top countries in the overall results of the CCPI 2019, the data is from 2019 since with the covid-19 pandemic some countries scored better than ever not for actually improving in their environmental contribution but for being in extensive lockdowns which massively reduced their CO2 emissions. You may be wondering why is the top country in the fourth place, this is as according to CCPI there is no country who scored “very high” in every category so until that happens the top country will be in the fourth place. As you can see there is a specific region which continuously has a good score, I’m talking about the northern part of Europe, more specifically Scandinavia. The Scandinavia countries along the years have been constructing a utopia of the environment and that’s specifically what we are going to talk about now.
In order to limit average global warming to below 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, the Paris agreement calls for emissions of greenhouse gases to peak as soon as possible, with this in mind in the recent years the Nordic countries have started a rapid development in renewable energy technologies, where Nordic stakeholders make important contributions. Although lucky for their abundance in renewable energy resources, the Nordic countries are the ones who suffer the most when decreasing energy consumption due to factors including the long and cold winters they live through. So, in order to decrease the energy consumption, they opted to increase the energy efficiency having cut annual carbon dioxide emissions from household heating systems to just 0.2 tons of CO2 per capita, compared to an European average of 0.8 tons, district heating systems and low-energy constructions are just some examples of how this was made. All of this while still promoting sustainable economic growth and employment, these are the core ideas behind the Nordic countries policies. Ideas we can see being effective when looking at this graph that shows us the decoupling of emissions from economic growth.
DENMARK
Since Denmark’s 2012 Energy Agreement the country has been continuously moving towards carbon neutrality achieving well beyond their goals set in 2012. An example of this was the goal to achieve 40% of energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 which was more than achieved with a 78% share of all electricity production coming from renewables, data from “OUR WORLD DATA” again for more information check our sources. Denmark has also established an independent Climate Council consisting of experts from key fields who together with the minister for energy, utilities and climate annually report on progress towards strategic emission reduction targets. Denmark is the world leader in wind power with over 5000 wind turbines accounting for more than half of Danish electricity consumption all of this being supported by government backing for research and innovation and feed-in tariffs to guarantee developers’ return on investments.
FINLAND
Two interlinked ideas – cutting greenhouse gases and building a bioeconomy – characterize Finnish climate and energy policy making. In 2015 the Finnish Climate Change Act was set up to ensure a coherent long and medium-term approach to climate policy up to 2050 and 2030 respectively. The 2030 plan sets a medium-term target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in various sectors including: transport, housing and agriculture and determines measures for ensuring that the target in line with the EU 40% reduction target is reached. Finland also pays special attention to impacts assessments, cost efficiency of measures and to strengthening stakeholder participation. The changing patterns of consumption in climate action is also highlighted in the plan.
These are just 2 examples of Nordic countries and their policies, not having covered more due to time limitations. Nevertheless, in these examples we could see how with these drastic changes Nordic countries not also fulfilled their international obligations but also showed to other countries how is possible to reduce emissions in a sustainable and cost-efficient way.
Portugal’s environmental policies
According to SGI (Sustainable Governance Indicators), Portugal has reasonably good outcomes, despite some policy tensions, falling into the upper-middle ranks (rank 18) in this regard with a score of 6.2. This score is given following these two key factors: Environment and Global Environmental Protection.
Environment
The reduction in the production resulting from 2009-2014 economic crisis facilitated environmental pressures in the first half of the 2010s. This specifically stood out during the bailout period, when Portugal ranked third in 2014 and fourth in 2015 Climate Change Performance Index, which measures climate change protection performance.
However, due to the ensuing economic recovery, Portugal declined, falling to 18th place worldwide in the 2018 CCPI, Portugal’s worst result over the past five years. The decline eventually ended in 2019, rising one spot, ranking in 17th place.
Despite ranking very high in the “Domestic Policy” component, which assesses the policies of countries and their effects, Portugal lags behind in the legal texts and in the actual implementation of said policies.
Portugal during the years, have improved in certain topics but there are also challenges that need to be resolved. The European Commission’s 2019 Environmental Implementation Review for Portugal saw substantial progress in the regard of circular economy, which has been a priority during Costa’s first government, as well as progress on marine conservation and waste management, which have been improved since the 2017 review. It performs better than the EU in eco-innovation, environmental tax revenues and the proportion of land area that is protected.
As said before, Portugal also lacks in certain topics such as nature conservation, waste management (including low levels of recycling), water management, low productivity in using material resources to generate wealth and urban sprawl, among others. It was also referred that sustainable development has not been taken into consideration in some areas.
It also exists political tension in some parties around subsidies for the renewable energy sector, which was perceived to be excessive by a number of parties and bodies. This was a pretty relevant topic in 2017, but in 2019, PS, BE and PCP joined to approve the report of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on Payment of Excessive Rents to Electricity Producers in May, which concluded that there were indeed excessive rents. No measures were introduced, but it did add political pressure to talk about this issue.
Global Environmental Protection
Portugal agrees to and participates in EU-wide policies on the environment. It signed the Kyoto Protocol, and in 2016, approved the Paris Agreement.
Portugal has been a country that has become very active in the promotion of the protection of marine environments, making good use of its large maritime area, It has been so active that it started hosting the annual Oceans Meeting, gathering ministers responsible for oceans all around the world.
This commitment to advancing environmental protection is reflected in the “International Climate Policy” indicator of the 2019 CCPI, in which Portugal was rated “very high”, reflecting Portugal’s role in international negotiations.
We have contacted Sintra City Hall about this topic, regarding the environmental policies that have been implemented, and for what we could understand from their answer, the City Hall is focused on educating younger generations about environmental issues through web seminars, contests, and educational programs. Nevertheless, the City Hall also takes other approaches such as:
• The creation of a network of bike paths, to help create healthier habits in populations decreasing the use of private transportation.
• The monitoring of water and marine environments, such as Sintra’s coast and the iconic Sintra Cascais Natural Park.
• The creation of an organic waste collection network, so that these can be reused, preventing them from going to landfills.
• Requalification of schools and other buildings in order to make them more energy efficient.