Further information

Group members

Current 4E members:

• Dr Xiaocheng Hu – Research Fellow on ExeMPLaR and Met4Tech projects and Green Futures Solutions initiative
• Dr Maru Correa – Research Associate on ExeMPLaR, NEXT-AG and RENEW projects
• Xiang Li – PhD student on road transport air pollutant emissions
• Lin Zheng – PhD student on whole life carbon emissions of buildings
• Yinchen Liu – PhD student on biodiversity impacts of China's power system transition
• Hao Xu – PhD student on life cycle environmental impacts of China's urban water systems
• Shuning Shi – PhD student on life cycle environmental impacts of China's power system transition
• Abdullah Alahmary – PhD student on life cycle environmental impacts of waste management in Saudi Arabia
• Dongyan Chen – PhD student on life cycle environmental impacts of critical raw materials
• Anqi Liu – PhD student on biodiversity impacts of the UK energy transition on RENEW project
• Jiarui Xi – PhD student on life cycle environmental impacts of the UK water system

Former 4E members:

• Hongli Liu – Visiting PhD student from China University of Geosciences
• Dr Yang Qu – PhD student
• Dr Victor Kouloumpis – Senior Research Fellow on the WEFWEBS, CEReS, ICE, ExeMPLaR and CLIP projects
• Dr Kyle Roskilly – Industrial Impact Fellow on the Tevi project
• Dr Yong Li – Academic Visitor
• Dr Anshul Paneri – Research Associate on the IMP@CT project
• Dr Emily Stebbings – PhD student graduated in 2020
• Wensong Zhu – Visiting Master student from Central South University, China
• Dr Robert Pell – PhD student graduated in 2019 and Research Associate on the ExeMPLaR and ICURe projects
• Harry Barlow – MEng intern on the IMP@CT project
• Tianduo Peng – Visiting PhD student from Tsinghua University
• Dr Marina Maier – PhD student graduated in 2017
• Dr Gloria Salmoral – Research Fellow on the WEFWEBs project
• Prof Xunmin Ou – Academic Visitor from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University
• Tao Tan – Undergraduate intern from Huazhong University of Science and Technology
• Aggeliki Konsta – Erasmus+ undergraduate intern from the National Technical University of Athens
• Dr Zhiwei Wang – Academic Visitor from Energy Research Institute, Henan Academy of Sciences
• Dr Yongguo Li – Academic Visitor from Shanghai Ocean University

4E 2017

4E 2018

4E 2019

News - 2017

20 December 2017

Xiaoyu visited Energy Research Institute and Henan Key Lab of Biomass Energy at Henan Academy of Sciences in China. He gave a talk about ongoing research on sustainable energy within our group and explored ways to further strengthen the existing collaboration with Henan Academy of Sciences.

12 December 2017

New paper “Development and Application of an Electric Vehicles Life-cycle Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis Model” co-authored with colleagues from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University. We developed an expandable electric vehicle life-cycle analysis model (EV-LCA) to analyse the life cycle energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of EVs considering variations in electricity grid mix and vehicle energy efficiency performance. Using EV-LCA as a common model platform, we assessed GHG emissions of an average passenger battery electric vehicle (BEV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) with a comparative internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) under real-world driving conditions in China, the U.S., Japan, Canada and EU.

6 December 2017

Xiaoyu attended a meeting at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge within the WEFWEBs project. Consortium members from Imperial College London, UCL and Universities of Glasgow, Cambridge, Exeter, Oxford, Newcastle and Reading pondered on ways to integrate our highly interdisciplinary work on the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus. It was very challenging and stimulating!

29 November 2017

New paper “Performance assessment and life cycle analysis of potable water production from harvested rainwater by a decentralized system” from the RAINSAFE project co-authored by colleagues from the Centre for Water Systems (CWS). It suggests that potable water produced from a decentralized rainwater harvesting Point-of-Use (POU) treatment system currently performs more poorly than centralised water system from an environmental perspective in the UK context. Priority should be given to optimising the energy efficiency and exploring opportunities for combined use with renewable energy technologies in order to improve the environmental performance of POU treatment devices.

7 November 2017

Xiaoyu and colleagues from the Environment and Sustainability Institute and Camborne School of Mines (CSM) attended a two-day technical meeting of the CEReS project at BRGM in Orléans, France.

4 October 2017

Xiaoyu attended a three-day meeting at Bogotá, Colombia organised by RCUK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) global engagement programme. At the meeting Xiaoyu developed several good contacts in South America, Colombia in particular. And Bogotá is a fascinating city high up in the Andes mountain range!

2 October 2017

New paper “Experience of producing natural gas from corn straw in China” co-authored with colleagues from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University. We found that the use of bio-natural gas (BNG) from corn straw in China offers the potential for significant decreases (up to 80%) in life cycle GHG emissions and fossil fuel use.

22 August 2017

Xiaoyu attended the 9th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2017) held during August 21-24, 2017, in Cardiff, UK. He presented the work on “spatiotemporal Life Cycle Inventory method using a wind energy example” by our group member Marina Maier as part of her PhD. This new method will also be used in the ICE project.

20 August 2017

Prof Xunmin Ou from the Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University visited Xiaoyu’s group for two weeks between 7th and 18th August 2017 to strengthen the research collaboration between the two groups and institutions. This visit was funded by the Exeter – Tsinghua Fellowship.

31 July 2017

Chinese partners from Sichuan University and Zhongli Talesun Solar Co., Ltd joined us at the biannual meeting of the E-IPB project held at the Environment and Sustainability Institute.

News - 2018

 

22 December 2018

Rob just published the second paper from his PhD - "Environmental optimisation of mine scheduling through life cycle assessment integration". Congratulations Rob!

12 November 2018

Xiaoyu is involved in a successful CUHK-Exeter Joint Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Resilience (ENSURE) grant led by Catherine Caine (Law School) and involving Ian Bateman, Brett Day, Annalisa Marini and Michela Faccioli in the Business School and Cornelia Guell in ECEHH within Exeter as well as collaborators in the University of Queensland in Australia and Tsinghua University in China. The title of the project is Global Food Security, Climate Change and Resilience: An International Perspective. It will run for 2 years from Jan 2019 to Dec 2020 and will receive £135,000 from Exeter and HK$1,000,000 from CUHK. The project will seek to address three key questions: 1) What are the current and potential future human health impacts of environmental degradation, including air and water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, caused by agricultural intensification? 2) At what cost are consumers willing to pay to alleviate negative environment impacts resulting from agricultural production? Will there be different attitudes due to income and cultural background? 3) What policy or legal options are available to alleviate climate change and minimize environmental impacts resulting from agricultural intensification and changes in consumer choices?

 

30 October 2018

New paper “Applying and advancing the economic resource scarcity potential (ESP) method for rare earth elements” by Rob just published!

 

27 September 2018

The group welcomes new members Dr Anshul Paneri and Xiang Li. Anshul is a Research Associate on the IMP@ACT project and will be working on designs of renewable energy supply systems for small-scale mobile mining applications. Xiang is a PhD student funded through the China Scholarship Council and University of Exeter PhD Scholarship. He will be working on a topic around Energy, Air Pollution and Human Health.

16 September 2018

Xiaoyu spent a week in Ecuador attending the kick-off meeting and stakeholder engagement events of a new Water-Energy-Food-Environment Nexus project NEXT-AG: NEXus Thinking for sustainable AGricultural development in Andean countries. This was a very fruitful trip that will ensure the key stakeholders in the water, energy, agricultural sectors in Ecuador are involved throughout the project.

 

7 September 2018

Xiaoyu attended the last WEFWEBS project meeting held at Imperial College London. The consortium members reflected on the challenges, achievements and potential legacies of the 3-year interdisciplinary Water-Energy-Food Nexus project.   

 

31 August 2018

Xiaoyu attended the 9th edition of the international SOLARIS conference during August 30-31, 2018, in Chengdu, China. He presented a poster titled “Challenges and research needs in LCA of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV)”.

25 August 2018

Xiaoyu attended the 10th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE2018) during August 22-25, 2018, in Hong Kong, China. He gave a talk on “Infrastructure-Integrated Photovoltaic (IIPV): a boost to solar energy’s green credentials?”

06 August 2018

Xiaoyu attended the 2018 China-UK Workshop on Renewable Energy Systems in Zero Carbon Villages funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and British Council. He gave a talk titled “Integrated Systems Thinking for Low Carbon and Sustainable Development”. The workshop was held in Lhasa, Tibet, an area of China with outstanding natural beauty and ecological importance.

02 August 2018

Xiaoyu attended the CYWater 2018 Summer Meeting – Hydrology Frontiers & Extension hosted by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He gave an invited talk titled “Water-Energy Nexus: from Trade-offs to Synergies”.

30 July 2018

Xiaoyu visited the School of Environment, Tsinghua University, where Rob is doing a placement supported by the British Council/Newton Fund UK-China Joint Research and Innovation Partnership Fund. Xiaoyu explored opportunities to build long-term collaborations with the Urban Mining group around circular economy and environmental sustainability.

04 June 2018

The group welcomes new member Dr Kyle Roskilly. Kyle is an Industrial Impact Fellow on the EG4B project and will be working on the development of a sensors network to collect data on resource use and waste generation from businesses.

30 May 2018

New paper “Scaling the nexus: Towards integrated frameworks for analysing water, energy and food” from the WEFWEBS project. In this paper, we elucidate many challenges that have arisen across nexus research, including the impact of multiple scales in operation, and concomitantly, what impact these scales have on data accessibility. We also assess some of the critical frameworks and tools that are applied by nexus researchers and articulate some of the steps required to develop from nexus thinking to an operationalisable concept, with a consistent focus on scale and data availability.

 

18 April 2018

New paper Development and application of a life cycle greenhouse gas emission analysis model for mobile air conditioning systems co-authored with colleagues from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University. Mobile air conditioning (MAC) is potentially a huge source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in China from a life cycle perspective as the vehicle population increases in the future. We developed the MAC-GHG-LCA model to calculate life cycle GHG emissions from MAC systems, covering life-span refrigerant leakage (direct emissions) and emissions caused by energy use in MAC system production and operation (indirect emissions).

11 April 2018

New research grant! Xiaoyu is successful in getting a grant led by Cranfield University funded by NERC through the Newton Fund under the RCUK-CONICYT (Chile) Broadening Impact Call. The grant is £730K in total, £497K contributed by UK and £233K by Chile. The 3-year project is titled NEXus Thinking for sustainable AGricultural development in Andean countries (NEXT-AG). 

Securing a sustainable supply of water, energy and food while at the same time protecting the environment is a key global issue. Traditionally, policymaking for each sector (food, water, energy and environment) has been designed largely in isolation, without consideration of the synergies and trade-offs between them, leading in some cases to overexploitation of natural resources, increasing competition between sectors and negative externalities. This has been the case of the agricultural expansion planned in Ecuador and Peru during the last decades to take advantage of a growing international market. By unpacking synergies and trade-offs through a WEFE (Water-Energy-Food-Environment) nexus approach, the aim of the NEXT-AG project is to provide policymakers in those countries with the needed evidence base that allows them to develop new coordinated policies and programmes for increasing resilience and promoting sustainable economic growth in the context of increasing national and global food demand. Focusing on Ecuador and Peru, this project will: 

a) Study the implications of increasing food production and associated policies on availability of water, energy and other natural resources for other sectors and the environment; 

b) Develop an integrated modelling framework in collaboration with stakeholders to evaluate how current and future policies will impact on the WEFE nexus for food provision services and the trade-offs in the context of increasing food demand and exports to international markets; 

c) Inform future WEFE policies in the countries under study, leading to the sustainable use of natural resources and economic growth.

 

10 April 2018

New paper Development and application of China provincial road transport energy demand and GHG emissions analysis model co-authored with colleagues from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University. We developed a novel bottom-up model to estimate the future energy demand and GHG emissions of China’s road transport at a provincial level, considering local economic development, population and policies.

 

1 March 2018

The group welcomes new members Dr Victor Kouloumpis and Tianduo Peng. Victor is a Research Fellow on the CEReS and ICE projects and will be working on LCA of energy systems and the CEReS process. Tianduo is a visiting PhD student from Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University. He will be working with Xiaoyu on LCA of electric vehicles for 6 months from March to August 2018. We also say farewell to James Miller who will be moving to another country. All the best James!

 

21 February 2018

New paper “Food-energy-water nexus: a life cycle analysis on virtual water and embodied energy in food consumption in the Tamar catchment, UK” from the WEFWEBS project. It demonstrates, from a food consumption perspective, the potential of life cycle thinking in understanding the complex and often “hidden” linkages between Food-Energy-Water (FEW) systems. The study evaluates the upstream virtual water and embodied energy in food consumption in the Tamar catchment, South West England. This is useful considering potential unexpected changes in trade under recent global socio-political trends.

 

10 January 2018

Robert Pell has been successful in his application for the British Council/Newton Fund UK-China Joint Research and Innovation Partnership Fund (PhD Placement Programme). He will visit the Urban Mining group at Tsinghua University from February to November 2018 and develop new links in areas such as life cycle assessment, sustainable minerals sourcing and circular economy. Many congratulations Rob!

05 January 2018

Xiaoyu attended a biannual meeting of the E-IPB project at one of the Chinese partners Zhongli Talesun Solar Co., Ltd, in Shangshu, China. In addition to the usual technical discussions of the project, we also learned a lot about large-scale automated solar PV manufacturing, smart management of solar farms and innovative ways to combine solar technologies with agriculture.

 

03 January 2018

Xiaoyu visited Shanghai Ocean University and gave a talk about ongoing research on sustainable energy within our group. He also explored ways to build new collaborations with colleagues at Shanghai Ocean University in areas such as marine renewable energy and marine ecosystem services.

News - 2019

29 November 2019

Victor just published his first paper since joining 4E – “Performance and life cycle assessment of a small scale vertical axis wind turbine”, together with our collaborator at Bialystok University of Technology, Poland. Congratulations Victor!

5 September 2019

Rob just published the fouth paper from his PhD - "Mineral processing simulation based-environmental life cycle assessment for rare earth project development: A case study on the Songwe Hill project", together with collaborators at the School of Environment in Tsinghua University. Well done!

2 August 2019

The 4E group welcomes a new member Dr Yong Li. Yong will be working with Xiaoyu on clean energy technologies as an Academic Visitor funded by the China Scholarship Council under the International Clean Energy Talent Programme (iCET).

10 July 2019

Xiaoyu just published a new paper “Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of multi-pathways natural gas vehicles in china considering methane leakage” with collaborators at Institute of Energy, Environment, Economy (3E), Tsinghua University.

 

18 June 2019

Rob just passed his viva with minor corrections. The title of his PhD is “Responsible sourcing of rare earth elements.” Many congratulations Dr Pell!

14 June 2019

Xiaoyu and Victor attend the last CEReS project meeting held at the University of Exeter Penryn Campus. CEReS explored the potential for co-processing of coal mine and electronic wastes, a novel way of recovering valuable and critical resources from waste for a sustainable future.

 

1 June 2019

Xiaoyu just published a new paper “Common characteristics of feedstock stage in life cycle assessments of agricultural residue-based biofuels” with collaborators at Energy Research Institute, Henan Academy of Sciences in China.

 

30 May 2019

Xiaoyu attended the SETAC Europe 29th Annual Meeting held on 26-30 May 2019 in Helsinki, Finland. He presented some preliminary results from an environmental life cycle assessment of a novel method to co-process coal mine and electronic wastes. The work was done by Victor and Xiaoyu as part of the CEReS project. 

 

20 May 2019

The group welcomes new member Dr Maru Correa – Research Associate on the ExeMPLaR and NEXT-AG projects.

17 May 2019

Xiaoyu attended a workshop on social sustainability of mining as part of the IMP@ACT project, held in the Koli National Park, Finland. 

7 May 2019

Rob has been successful in his application “Predictive environmental monitoring for mining project development” for ICURe Innovation to Commercialisation (funded by InnovateUK), a very competitive programme. During the 3 months on the programme Rob will be able to claim up to £35,000 of expenditure and up to £15,000 of salary. Rob, Xiaoyu, a Business Advisor (Nick Russill, Managing Director of TerraDat) and a Techonology Transfer Officer (Jim Williams, IIB) will attend a Residential Bootcamp in Belfast next week, where they will receive training, coaching and support for Customer Interaction and Market Validation and for developing a business model. Rob will commence market validation activity immediately following bootcamp, travelling around the world to speak with potential customers. At the end of the 3 months, the team will present to a panel of business experts and entrepreneurs. Depending on their recommendations, the team may be invited to apply for spin-out/Start-up funding or carry out some further market validation. Many congratulations on this exciting opportunity Rob!

 

16 April 2019

Xiaoyu attended the Third Oxford Meeting on Food System Impact Valuation. There were lots of stimulating discussions around methods to quantify and value the environmental and social impacts of food.

2 March 2019

Rob just published the third paper from his PhD - "Temporally explicit life cycle assessment as an environmental performance decision making tool in rare earth project development", together with collaborators in Tsinghua University. Excellent job Rob!

28 February 2019

Xiaoyu attended the International Workshop on Environmental Sustainability and Resilience on 25-26 February 2019 at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). The workshop was organised by CUHK – University of Exeter Joint Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Resilience (ENSURE). The workshop brought together nearly 50 multi-disciplinary researchers from both Universities and the University of Queensland. The participants reviewed broad collaborative projects currently in progress, and discussed new avenues of joint research and funding opportunities in the future. Xiaoyu and colleagues presented progress and plans on the ENSURE-funded project Global Food Security, Climate Change and Resilience: An International Perspective.

18 January 2019

We are recruiting a postdoc with expertise in life cycle assessment (LCA) to work on the ExeMPLaR and NEXT-AG projects. Apply here.

News - 2020

 

 

28 November 2020

Yang has just published the first paper from her PhD - “Energy-food nexus in the marine environment: a macroeconomic analysis on offshore wind energy and seafood production in Scotland”. We found that from a macroeconomic perspective, offshore wind farms have a negative, but limited, effect on seafood production sectors while having a positive impact on the economy overall and benefiting lower income households. Well done Yang!

 

06 October 2020

Yang has successfully defended her PhD entitled “Impacts of Offshore Wind Energy on Seafood Sectors: A Macroeconomic Perspective of the Energy-Food Nexus”. Many congratulations Dr Yang Qu!

30 July 2020

Emily has successfully defended her PhD entitled “Integrating marine ecosystem services into macroeconomic modelling” and started working as an Economist at the Innovate UK Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Many congratulations Dr Emily Stebbings!

1 July 2020

Xiaoyu is leading a new project CLIP: Circular and Low Impact Processed Food, funded by European Regional Development Fund through the Agritech Cornwall programme led by The Cornwall College Group/Duchy College. CLIP will develop a carbon impact assessment tool for processed foods, using the Cornish Pasty as a pilot. We will work with processed food manufacturers in Cornwall to develop a freely available tool that can help the industry better understand and ultimately improve the environmental performance of their products.

1 May 2020

Xiaoyu is involved in a new project to find Europe’s green technology metals. The four-year project ‘GREENPEG’ has received a grant of €8.3 million from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to develop new techniques to explore for pegmatite rocks containing lithium and other green technology metals. The consortium consists of 13 partners from 8 European countries, including universities and exploration and mining companies. The University of Exeter team, which will receive nearly €780k, is led by Ben Williamson with Frances Wall, Camborne School of Mines and Xiaoyu Yan, Engineering, supported by post-doctoral researchers Kate Smith and Rob Pell.

17 April 2020

A team from the 4E group just published a new paper “V Kouloumpis, RS Pell, ME Correa-Cano, X Yan. Potential trade-offs between eliminating plastics and mitigating climate change: An LCA perspective on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles in Cornwall. Science of the Total Environment 2020;138681”. The paper came out of research as part of the circular economy plastics project ExeMPLaR and found that simply substituting plastics by other materials could potentially result in higher carbon emissions, depending on regional and local waste infrastructure and management practices as well as consumer recycling behaviours.

 

2 April 2020

Xiaoyu just published a new paper “X Yan*, K Corbin, R Burton, DKY Tan. Agave: A promising feedstock for biofuels in the water-energy-food-environment (WEFE) nexus. Journal of Cleaner Production 2020;261:121283” with colleagues at the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide in Australia. The paper highlights the possibilities for bioethanol production in semi-arid Australia from agave, a high-sugar succulent plant widely grown in Mexico to make tequila, causing minimum pressure on food production and water resources and performing better than current biofuel feedstocks such as corn and sugarcane on carbon footprint. The paper is freely available for 50 days.

6 March 2020

Emily just published the first paper from her PhD “The marine economy of the United Kingdom”, together with a number of colleagues at PML. The paper defines a systematic approach to quantifying the UK marine economy and found the marine economy accounts for a much larger proportion of the UK economy than previously thought, comprising an estimated 8.1% of GVA and 6.1% of output. Excellent work Emily!

26 January 2020

Xiaoyu just published a new paper “Daily Global Solar Radiation in China Estimated from High‐density Meteorological Observations: A Random Forest Model Framework”, together with a number of collaborators across China.

1 January 2020

Xiaoyu published a new paper “Detecting and understanding synergies and co-benefits of low carbon development in the electric power industry in China”, together with collaborators at Fudan University.

News - 2021

21 September 2021

Former 4E member Rob Pell has just published a review paper “Towards sustainable extraction of technology materials through integrated approaches” in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. With the growing demand for a transition to renewable energy sources, the need to source sustainable, environmentally friendly raw materials and technology metals has risen significantly. In this paper, we outline how a life cycle assessment study that integrates considerations around the geology, mineralogy and ‘geometallurgy’ can help identify potential environmental impact ‘hot-spots’ before new extraction operations are begun. Great work Rob!

8 June 2021

Former 4E member Emily Stebbings has just published the second paper from her PhD. In the paper “Accounting for benefits from natural capital: Applying a novel composite indicator framework to the marine environment”, we developed a novel framework that investigates how the combination of different forms of capital (natural, financial, social, manufactured or human) provide a potential supply of benefits to the human society, and how changes in quality or extent of natural capital affects supply. Nice work Emily!

5 June 2021

Another publication from the IMP@ACT project Switch on-switch off small-scale mining: Environmental performance in a life cycle perspective! We assessed the environmental performance of a switch on-switch off (SOSO) approach to mining that relies on an integrated modular and mobile plant and is appropriate for rapid start-up and cessation of production from ore deposits that have economic viability dependent on fluctuating commodity prices.

26 May 2021

Former 4E member Anshul has just published his work within the IMP@ACT project. In the paper “Renewable energy can make small scale mining in Europe more feasible”, we found that mobile modular containerised renewable energy systems currently available on the market are technically and financially feasible to replace diesel generators for powering mobile, small-scale, switch-on, switch-off mining across Europe. Well done Anshul!

27 April 2021

Victor just published his last paper while at 4E – “Sustainable energy planning for remote islands and the waste legacy from renewable energy infrastructure deployment” in which we developed a life cycle sustainability framework to help inform the sustainable energy transition of remote islands. The work was carried out as part of the ICE project. Victor is leaving the university on 30th April 2021 and moving back to Greece. All the best Victor!

1 January 2021

The group welcomes new member Dr Xiaocheng (Sam) Hu. Xiaocheng is a Research Fellow on the ExeMPLaR and Met4Tech projects and will be working on household plastic footprint and the environmental sustainability of a circular economy for technology metals.

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