Ángel Galán Martín

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Galán Martín

First Name

Ángel

ORCID

0000-0002-1209-0985

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Publications 1 - 10 of 36

Multi-stage linear programming model for optimizing cropping plan decisions under the new Common Agricultural Policy
Galán Martín, Ángel; Pozo, Carlos; Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo; et al. (2015)
Land Use Policy
The new European Union's Common Agricultural Policy will cover the period from 2015 to 2020. Significant novelties in the payment scheme have been introduced which may potentially encourage farmers to implement changes at the farm level by meeting certain environmental requirements in return for support payments. The mandatory requirements, commonly known as 'greening rules', consist of crop diversification, maintenance of permanent grassland and establishment of an ecological focus area.This paper presents a decision-support tool based on a multi-stage linear programming model that identifies optimal cropping plan decisions under the new Common Agricultural Policy. The capabilities of our tool are illustrated through its application to the Spanish agricultural regions. Our method identifies the optimal cropping plan (i.e., crops to be grown and their acreage each year during the reform horizon) that maximizes the farmer's net return in each region. Furthermore, the model can also be used to calculate the minimum subsidy value that would make the implementation of greening rules economically appealing, thereby promoting the widespread adoption of more sustainable agricultural practises. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Assessing the performance of UK universities in the field of chemical engineering using data envelopment analysis
González-Garay, Andrés; Pozo, Carlos; Galán Martín, Ángel; et al. (2019)
Education for Chemical Engineers
Sustainability footprints of a renewable carbon transition for the petrochemical sector within planetary boundaries
Galán Martín, Ángel; Tulus Merlich, Victor; Díaz, Ismael; et al. (2021)
One Earth
The petrochemical sector will play a crucial role in developing low-carbon transition technologies, but the industry also contributes a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. Momentum is building to help reduce the carbon footprint of this hard-to-abate sector, particularly through replacing fossil carbon feedstocks with carbon from biomass, captured CO2, and other recycled resources, but the broader implications of these so-called “solutions” remain unclear. Here, we assess the overall sustainability of such “renewable carbon pathways” by quantifying their life-cycle environmental footprints with respect to the previously defined nine planetary boundaries. We show that although a shift toward renewable carbon pathways could indeed reduce CO2 emissions by 25% to over 100%, the scenario with the lowest carbon footprint could exceed the biodiversity planetary boundary by at least 30%. Our work highlights the potential pitfalls of overlooking global environmental guardrails beyond greenhouse gas emissions reduction and identifies new avenues for quantifying the environmental footprint of decarbonization solutions for hard-to-abate sectors.
Reply to the ‘Comment on “Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries”’ by Y. Yang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2020, 13, DOI: 10.1039/C9EE01176E
Algunaibet, Ibrahim M.; Pozo, Carlos; Galán Martín, Ángel; et al. (2020)
Energy & Environmental Science
In our recently published work, we incorporated planetary boundaries in the optimization of the United States (US) power sector in 2030. Yang claims there is a double-counting error in our results and encourages us to minimize direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions in our model. Here, we argue that Yang's main criticism based on the risk of double-counting emissions when multiple sectors are simultaneously optimized does not apply to our case study, in which only one sector – the power sector – is analyzed. To assess the implications of Yang's suggestion to minimize direct emissions, we repeated the calculations optimizing direct emissions instead of life cycle emissions. We found that this approach is unable to discriminate effectively between electricity production technologies and, consequently, leads to a suboptimal mix with impacts on climate change, ocean acidification and freshwater use 102, 33 and 1.5 times the limits, respectively, whereas our original solution meets all planetary boundaries concurrently. Our findings imply that Yang's suggestion of optimizing direct emissions in energy systems models might not the best way forward in single-sector studies like ours.
Designing biomass supply chains within planetary boundaries
Wheeler, Jonathan; Galán Martín, Ángel; Mele, Fernando D.; et al. (2021)
AIChE Journal
The design of sustainable supply chains, which recently emerged as an active area of research in process systems engineering, is vital to ensure sustainable development. Despite past and ongoing efforts, the available methods often overlook impacts beyond climate change or incorporate them via standard life cycle assessment metrics that are hard to interpret from an absolute sustainability viewpoint. We here address the design of biomass supply chains considering critical ecological limits of the Earth—planetary boundaries—which should never be surpassed by anthropogenic activities. Our method relies on a mixed‐integer linear program that incorporates a planetary boundaries‐based damage model to quantify absolute sustainability precisely. We apply this approach to the sugarcane‐to‐ethanol industry in Argentina, identifying the optimal combination of technologies and network layout that minimize the impact on these ecological boundaries. Our framework can find applications in a wide range of supply chain problems related to chemicals and fuels production, energy systems, and agriculture planning. © 2020 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Correction: Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries
Algunaibet, Ibrahim M.; Pozo, Carlos; Galán Martín, Ángel; et al. (2019)
Energy & Environmental Science
Correction for ‘Powering sustainable development within planetary boundaries’ by Ibrahim M. Algunaibet et al., Energy Environ. Sci., 2019, 12, 1890–1900.
Delaying carbon dioxide removal in the European Union puts climate targets at risk
Galán Martín, Ángel; Vázquez, Daniel; Cobo Gutiérrez, Selene; et al. (2021)
Nature Communications
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will be essential to meet the climate targets, so enabling its deployment at the right time will be decisive. Here, we investigate the still poorly understood implications of delaying CDR actions, focusing on integrating direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (DACCS and BECCS) into the European Union power mix. Under an indicative target of −50 Gt of net CO2 by 2100, delayed CDR would cost an extra of 0.12−0.19 trillion EUR per year of inaction. Moreover, postponing CDR beyond mid-century would substantially reduce the removal potential to almost half (−35.60 Gt CO2) due to the underused biomass and land resources and the maximum technology diffusion speed. The effective design of BECCS and DACCS systems calls for long-term planning starting from now and aligned with the evolving power systems. Our quantitative analysis of the consequences of inaction on CDR—with climate targets at risk and fair CDR contributions at stake—should help to break the current impasse and incentivize early actions worldwide.
Assessment of the environmental efficiency of the electricity mix of the top European economies via data envelopment analysis
Ewertowska, Anna; Galán Martín, Ángel; Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo; et al. (2016)
Journal of Cleaner Production
Moving towards a more sustainable energy system is a major goal of modern societies that aim to minimize the dependence on fossil fuels and the associated anthropogenic impacts. In this article, the combined use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is applied to analyse the environmental performance (eco-efficiency) of the electricity mix of the top European economies. This approach allows identifying environmentally efficient and inefficient countries considering as undesirable inputs several environmental impacts associated with the production of 1 kWh (regarded as output). The method provides as well targets for the inefficient countries that (if attained) would make them efficient. Our results provide valuable insight for governments and policy makers that aim to satisfy the electricity demand while minimizing the associated environmental impact.
Time for global action: an optimised cooperative approach towards effective climate change mitigation
Galán Martín, Ángel; Pozo, Carlos; Azapagic, Adisa; et al. (2018)
Energy & Environmental Science
The difficulties in climate change negotiations together with the recent withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement call for new cooperative mechanisms to enable a resilient international response. In this study we propose an approach to aid such negotiations based on quantifying the benefits of interregional cooperation and distributing them among the participants in a fair manner. Our approach is underpinned by advanced optimisation techniques that automate the screening of millions of alternatives for differing levels of cooperation, ultimately identifying the most cost-effective solutions for meeting emission targets. We apply this approach to the Clean Power Plan, a related act in the U.S. aiming at curbing carbon emissions from electricity generation, but also being withdrawn. We find that, with only half of the states cooperating, the cost of electricity generation could be reduced by US$41 billion per year, while simultaneously cutting carbon emissions by 68% below 2012 levels. These win–win scenarios are attained by sharing the emission targets and trading electricity among the states, which allows exploiting regional advantages. Fair sharing of dividends may be used as a key driver to spur cooperation since the global action to mitigate climate change becomes beneficial for all participants. Even if global cooperation remains elusive, it is worth trying since the mere cooperation of a few states leads to significant benefits for both the U.S. economy and the climate. These findings call on the U.S. to reconsider its withdrawal but also boost individual states to take initiative even in the absence of federal action.
Data envelopment analysis approach to targeting in sustainable chemical process design: Application to liquid fuels
Rodríguez-Vallejo, Daniel F.; Galán Martín, Ángel; Guillén Gosálbez, Gonzalo; et al. (2019)
AIChE Journal

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Ángel Galán Martín

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