Optimization model for environmental impact of energy systems

Abstract

As a consequence of the population centralization during the last decades, result of an intense urbanization process, a lot of areas in the world have been suffering several problems. The social and environmental problems consequent to the urbanization can be expressed by the high taxes of production of solid wastes and a necessary treatment of the liquid wastes that occupy huge areas and represent significant impacts for the environment. The cities, considered as the cells of a country, demand an analysis of energy planning from a specific methodological approach, for the electricity in public illumination, services, industrial and residential demands, besides the transportation uses, which results in direct and indirect way high indexes of pollutant emissions. In this article, the main characteristics of an energy planning system are analyzed for cities of small and medium sizes, as well as the possible available energy contributions for the service of those demands; a model based on optimization programming is proposed for selecting the most environmentally attractive electric generating systems to be considered for the city's energy demand.