PhD Study : Assessing Effect of Carbon Emission Reduction by Integrating Renewable Energy and Spaceborne Observation Technologies

The growth rate of atmospheric CO2 reflects the net effect of emissions and uptake resulting from anthropogenic and natural carbon sources and sinks. The anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are primarily generated by human activities, such as fossil fuel combustion for power and energy generation. In the past decade, renewable energy (RE) technologies, including solar and wind power, geothermal and hydro power, have been gradually been deployed and utilised in domestic buildings for heating and electricity, meanwhile some policies for decarbonisation, like the Paris Agreement and integrating REs into urban buildings have been introduced or are even enforced. However global fossil CO2 emissions are still more than 4% higher in 2019 compared with those in 2015, it is not clear what is the real contribution of REs to CO2 reduction, particularly when the climate and geometry factors are considered.

The proposed project aims to apply earth observation and renewable energy methods to retrieve CO2 emissions on the urbans with REs’ integration as energy supply and assess the effect of intermittent REs supply on CO2 emission reduction. The proposed research will involve the development of critical understanding and technical solutions for promoting renewable energy applications in urbans towards CO2 reduction. Through retrieving CO2 emissions from satellite data, the project will seek to improve energy supply efficiency in the aspects of heating, cooling and energy storage under the intermittent characteristics of the REs; and provide insights into operability with future deployment of REs in urbans for CO2 reduction. The expected research outcomes of the project would be in the form of:

* estimates of CO2 concentration and distribution for urbans or regions under investigation by applying the GHG products of satellites.

* fusion algorithms for aggregating CO2 retrieval results from different satellites on required spatial and temporal scales.

* the methods for assessing the effect of integrating the REs into urban for reducing CO2 emission in different regions with variable climates.

The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary team to carry out the PhD study in the Centre for Sustainable Technologies (CST). There are several research directions that could significantly improve our understanding, hence the candidate would have an opportunity of incorporating their research interests into this PhD project.