This study focuses on carbon capture and distribution technology, which is a new approach to the solution of this problem. In order to use this technology more effectively, six significant criteria are defined by considering the essentials of the international Loss Control Institute and the supported literature. Moreover, the analytic network process (ANP) is applied for measuring the relative importance of each factor. The findings demonstrate that organizational factor has the greatest importance, whereas market factor is the weakest element. In addition, the education of the personnel is the most important criterion for low-cost industrial carbon dioxide capture and separation technologies. In this context, it is seen that companies need competent personnel in order to reduce the costs of these products. There are two types of strategies that companies can develop to achieve this goal. Firstly, it would be appropriate for companies to provide their staff with the necessary training... [more]

Damages caused by wildfires in California due to transmission line failures have increased significantly in recent years. Curtailment of electric service in areas under fire threat has been implemented to avoid these wildfires. Results from this research indicated that 24% of California’s cities are at risk of wildfire, while 52% are at risk of blackout. These blackouts have resulted in significant financial losses and risk to life and health. Undergrounding current transmission lines has been proposed as a long-term solution. However, undergrounding lines would take decades to complete and increase average monthly electric bills from $80 to $260. This research investigated shortening the length of the electricity supply chain, supplying affected communities with onshore and offshore wind energy. Results showed good wind energy potential in locations near affected cities. Distance analyses revealed that more than two hundred cities (population 5.5 million) can be served by existing win... [more]

Carbon emissions are a prominent issue for sustainable energy production and management. Energy policies under the growing competitive environment could change the priorities of emission reduction and investment decisions. This paper aims to forecast carbon emissions from China and to rank the importance of carbon emissions with interval type 2 (IT2) fuzzy sets (FS) for sustainable energy investments. For this purpose, the quadratic model is applied to measuring emission trends and the Qualitative Flexible Multiple Criteria Method (QUALIFLEX) is used for measuring sustainable energy investment alternatives by the several emission levels. Forecasted values of 29 provinces in China are converted into the linguistic and fuzzy numbers based on IT2 FS respectively to measure the priorities of emission reduction for sustainable economies. The novelty of this paper is to propose a hybrid decision-making approach based on quadratic modeling and the QUALIFLEX method and to discuss the overall e... [more]

The increase in global electricity demand, along with its impact on climate change, call for integrating sustainability aspects in the power system expansion planning. Sustainable power generation planning needs to fulfill different, often contradictory, objectives. This paper proposes a multi-objective optimisation model integrating four objective functions, including minimisation of total discounted costs, carbon emissions, land use, and social opposition. Other factors addressed in the model include renewable energy share, jobs created, mortality rates, and energy diversity, among others. Single-objective linear optimisations are initially performed to investigate the impact of each objective function on the resulting power generation mix. Minimising land use and discounted total costs favoured fossil fuels technologies, as opposed to minimising carbon emissions, which resulted in increased renewable energy shares. Minimising social opposition also favoured renewable energy shares,... [more]

The aim of this study is to define the features that smart buildings should fulfil in order to be compatible with the overall context of the smart city and to introduce a new evaluation framework of Smart Buildings Integration into a Smart City (SBISC). By analysing scientific literature as well as existing international and local project examples, the features of smart buildings that are expected to be adopted in smart cities were identified. The SBISC evaluation methodology was developed and applied to a set of selected projects. The literature review revealed that the smart building and smart city concepts were developed in different time frames and by different stakeholders and, thus, need to be realigned. The most important aspect is to employ in a smart building all the functionalities proposed by the smart areas of the city and vice versa by enabling the recommended features of smart materials, smart building services, and smart construction to serve for the surrounding systems.... [more]

This article considers the problem of the evaluation of the sustainability of heterogeneous process systems, which can have different areas of focus: from single process operations to complete supply chains. The proposed method defines exergy-based concepts to evaluate the assets, liabilities, and the exergy footprint of the analysed process systems, ensuring that they are suitable for Life Cycle Assessment. The proposed concepts, evaluation framework and cumulative Exergy Composite Curves allow the quantitative assessment of process systems, including alternative solutions. The provided case studies clearly illustrate the applicability of the method and the close quantitative relationship between the exergy profit and the potential sustainability contribution of the proposed solutions. The first case study demonstrates how the method is applied to the separation and reuse of an acetic-acid-containing waste stream. It is shown that the current process is not sustainable and needs subst... [more]

The rapid economic growth of China in the past decades has been accompanied by serious environmental problems. In the country, both economic development and environmental pollution show a geographically uneven pattern, with some regions displaying significantly better performance than others in economic and/or environmental performance. To understand the regional pattern of economic and environmental performance, this article analyzes sustainable development at the Chinese provincial level. Three sustainability indices are defined and computed by combining economic and environmental factors based on data envelopment analysis. The three indices correspond to the concepts of natural disposability, managerial disposability and null-joint relationship, respectively. Natural (managerial) disposability prioritizes economic (environmental) outcome in measuring sustainability. Furthermore, the assumption of a null-joint relationship implies that undesirable outputs are by-products of desirable... [more]

This paper provides an investigation into the sustainability of the electrical system in Spain. The analysis covers historic inventories of power generation, installed capacity and technology mix since 1990 and also contemplates four alternative projections for 2030 and 2050. The sustainability is evaluated using eight indicators that provide objective information about the environmental (climate change, fossil depletion, ozone layer depletion, terrestrial acidification, human toxicity and photochemical smog), economic (levelized cost of electricity) and socio-economic (direct employment) performance of the system. The results show an increase in the magnitude of the environmental impacts between 1990 and 2008, due to a growing power demand triggered by economic expansion. After 2008, the environmental performance improves due to the economic recession and the penetration of renewable energies. Overall, the cost of power generation remains rather stable as rising expenses generated by... [more]

The energy trilemma and UN SDG 7 form the key drivers for the future of all kinds of energy research. In nuclear technology, molten salt reactors are an interesting option, since they can offer a game-changing approach to deliver an attractive, highly sustainable option for a zero-carbon society by providing sufficient breeding for a self-sustained long-term operation based on spent nuclear fuel from existing reactors while being able to be controlled ideally by inherent processes. To achieve these goals, several basic challenges have already been identified and worked on; demonstration of sufficient breeding and development of a demand driven salt clean up system. This study follows up on the opportunity for reactor control based on inherent feedback mechanisms. It is demonstrated that the investigated sodium chloride-uranium chloride-based systems can feasibly deliver a thermal feedback effect, which is strong enough, to compensate for the critically change due to breeding and fissio... [more]

From airplanes to electric vehicles and trains, modern transportation systems require large quantities of energy. These vast amounts of energy have to be produced somewhere—ideally by using sustainable sources—and then brought to the transportation system. Energy is a scarce and costly resource, which cannot always be produced from renewable sources. Therefore, it is critical to consume energy as efficiently as possible, that is, transportation activities need to be carried out with an optimal intake of energetic means. This paper reviews existing work on the optimization of energy consumption in the area of transportation, including road freight, passenger rail, maritime, and air transportation modes. The paper also analyzes how optimization methods—of both exact and approximate nature—have been used to deal with these energy-optimization problems. Finally, it provides insights and discusses open research opportunities regarding the use of new intelligent algorithms—combining metaheur... [more]

Climate change will require societal-scale infrastructural changes. Balancing priorities for water, energy, and climate will demand that approaches to water and energy management deviate from historical practice. Infrastructure designed to mitigate environmental harm, particularly related to climate change, is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Understanding the implications of such infrastructure for environmental quality is thus of interest. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a common sustainability assessment tool that aims to quantify the total, multicriteria environmental impact caused by a functional unit. Notably, however, LCA quantifies impacts in the form of environmental “costs” of delivering the functional unit. In the case of mitigation infrastructures, LCA results can be confusing because they are generally reported as the harmful impacts of performing mitigation rather than as net impacts that incorporate benefits of successful mitigation. This paper argue... [more]

Renewable Energy Sources (RES) have taken on an increasingly important role in the energy mix in the last few years, and it has been forecasted that this trend will continue in the future. The energy production from these sources is not dispatchable, and the increasing penetration of RES in energy mixes may therefore lead to a progressive loss of generation control and predictability. It has become clear that, to reach higher RES penetration levels, it is essential to increase power system flexibility in order to ensure stable operations are maintained. An ICT (Information and Communication Technology) tool that may be used to manage and optimize the flexibility offered by energy storage and conversion systems is described in this paper with specific reference to the Decision Support System (DSS) developed within the H2020 PLANET (PLAnning and operational tools for optimizing energy flows and synergies between energy NETworks) project. The paper focuses on how the PLANET DSS tool evalu... [more]

The purpose of this study is to determine the issues that financial institutions should pay attention to in their decision to provide financing to large scale energy projects. Within this framework, taking into account the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach, 4 dimensions and 8 criteria that can be effective in these decisions of financial institutions were determined. After that, the importance weights of these dimensions and criteria were determined by interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy DEMATEL method. In addition, 3 different types of banks (public, private, foreign) are listed for their performance in financing energy projects. According to the results of the analysis, the technological and financial adequacy of the company that will invest in energy is the issue that financial institutions should pay the most attention to in their credit decision. Therefore, it is important for financial institutions to visit the customer's location and pay attention to the technological adequacy in the pr... [more]

Electro Discharge Machining (EDM) can be an element of a sustainable manufacturing system. In the present study, the sustainability implications of EDM of special-purpose steels are investigated. The machining quality (minimum surface roughness), productivity (material removal rate) improvement and cost (electrode wear rate) minimization are considered. The influence and correlation of the three most important machining parameters including pulse on time, current and pulse off time have been investigated on sustainable production. Empirical models have been established based on response surface methodology for material removal rate, electrode wear rate and surface roughness. The investigation, validation and deeper insights of developed models have been performed using ANOVA, validation experiments and microstructure analysis respectively. Pulse on time and current both appeared as the prominent process parameters having a significant influence on all three measured performance metrics... [more]

Composite indicators are becoming more relevant for evaluating the performance of water companies from a holistic perspective. Some of them are related with economic aspects, and others focus on social and environmental features. Consequently, a multidimensional evaluation is necessary for handling the great amount of information provided by multiple single indicators of a different nature. This paper presents a two-phase approach to evaluate the sustainability of water companies. First, a partial composite indicator for each dimension (social, environmental, economic) is obtained using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM). Then, a global indicator is obtained, in terms of the values reached in the previous stage for every partial indicator, by means an optimization problem rooted in data envelopment analysis (DEA). Our proposal offers the possibility of analyzing the performance of each water company under each dimension that characterizes the concept of sustainability, as well as a... [more]

Urban heat island effects (UHIE) are becoming increasingly widespread, thus, there is an urgent need to address thermal comfort, which significantly influences the daily lives of people. In this study, a means of improving the thermal environment by spatial analysis of heat was implemented to ensure basic thermal comfort in future smart cities. Using Seoul as the study site, the relationship between sensible heat and land cover type was used to identify heat islands in this city. Thereafter, k-means clustering was employed to extract unfavourable and favourable thermal areas. High sensible heat indicates locations where environmental heat needs to be mitigated. Sensible heat distribution data were used for spatial typification to formulate an effective land cover factor to mitigate the UHIE. In-situ net radiation data measured at six sites were utilised to confirm the spatial typification of the thermal environment. It was found that expanding the green space by 1% reduces the sensible... [more]

Over the years, energy is becoming an essential factor with an impact on social, economic, and environmental aspects. More than 2.5 billion people are connected to agriculture worldwide, so the importance of agricultural energy production has become increasingly important. This study provides a comprehensive review of renewable energy, environment, and farm publication trends. Two hundred articles from 1988 to 2022 were analyzed, with special attention devoted to the last three extreme years, using the Scopus database and the Bibliometrix tool for analysis and visualization. Research on this topic experienced significant developments after 2008, with many fluctuations being revealed. Historically, China and the USA were the most productive countries in agricultural energy production advancements. However, in the last three years, the research center’s respective contributions have undergone major changes. China maintained its dominance, but the importance of the USA fell sharply, and n... [more]

This research presents the findings of an evaluation of off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems and their sustainability models in Colombia within the “Evaluation of Isolated Photovoltaic Systems and Their Sustainability Models” project supported by the Global Environment Fund (GEF). It involves the analysis of primary and secondary information on the photovoltaic energy projects for rural electrification in this country. Part of the information was obtained through interviews with different stakeholders who work in solar electrification in non-interconnected zones (NIZ), covering rural and island contexts. It was complemented by a comparative analysis of international projects implemented in Latin America. The results are shown as lessons learned, with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) study representing the current situation of rural electrification with PV technology as perceived and describing the opportunities for the improvement of rural electrification strate... [more]

Walnut tree (Carya illinoensis (Wangenh.) K. Koch) is a plant species showing ecological, social, and economic importance in México. The objective was to determine biomass productivity and to characterize the raw material and biomass briquettes obtained from walnut thinning pruning. The variables evaluated were tree total height (TH), fresh biomass (FB) and dry biomass (DB) per hectare (kg ha−1). Briquettes were made by using the biomass obtained in both orchards. Laboratory tests for original biomass included moisture content (MC), ash content (AC), volatile matter (VM) and fixed carbon (FC), as well as high heating value (HHV). Briquette studies also included diameter (D), weight (W), length (L), volume (V), density (Ds), and HHV. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) under a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement. Thinning pruning in walnut orchards provides 12 kg tree−1 (998 kg ha−1) of dry biomass, with acceptable... [more]

The current socio-economic and environmental context obliges companies to increase their energy efficiency to be competitive, and the development of Industry 4.0 technologies should contribute to improve it. This article analyses the influence of Industry 4.0 technologies on energy efficiency and the mediation of quality management of production process variables. After a descriptive analysis, a correlation and regression analysis is presented using information from 72 projects for the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies in industrial companies. At a global level, it is confirmed that the four technology groups (Artificial Vision and Artificial Intelligence, Additive Manufacturing and Robotics, Big Data and Advanced Analytics, and Internet of Things) contribute to improving energy efficiency by an average of 15−25% in the processes where they are integrated. In addition, the regression model determines that improved decision-making capabilities strongly mediate the achievement of... [more]

Digital transformation has emerged as a key driver of business innovation and growth in the 21st century. As organizations increasingly rely on digital technologies to operate and interact with customers, digital transformation has become an essential strategy for remaining competitive in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Simultaneously, the relevance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has increased in the context of consumers, investors, and regulators, as the negative consequences of business activities on the natural environment and society become increasingly evident. In this research article, we examine the relationship between ESG and the triple transformation of business, people, and technology, as well as how organizations can use digital technologies to enhance their ESG performance. Our aim is to identify the principal drivers and mechanisms that shape ESG performance in the context of triple transformation and to investigate the trade-offs and s... [more]

Eliminating environmental and air pollution is one of the European Union’s priority actions in the field of transport. Poland, as a member of the European Community, is also actively involved in these activities. The flagship project, the implementation of which is expected to bring tangible effects in this respect, is the “Sustainable Transport Development Strategy until 2030”. It states that in 2030 there should be 600,000 BEVs (battery electric vehicles) on Polish roads. At present, the share of such vehicles in the automotive market in Poland is small, which is a result of a number of barriers. One of them, very important considering the preferences of Poles, is the cost of buying such a car, which is currently at least 40% higher than its counterpart with a combustion engine. Meanwhile, popularizers of electric cars believe that the cost of buying such a vehicle is offset by the subsequent costs associated with its operation. Hence, this paper determines and then compares the tota... [more]

This study aims at introducing a modeling and simulation approach for a green roof system which can reduce energy cost of a building exposed to high temperatures throughout the summer season. First, to understand thermal impact of a green roof system on a building surface, a field-based study has been conducted in Commerce, Texas, U.S., where the average maximum temperature in summer is 104 °F (40 °C). Two types of analyses were conducted: (1) comparison of temperature between different plant type via Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and (2) polynomial regression analysis to develop thermal impact estimation model based on air temperature and presence of a green roof. In addition, an agent-based simulation (ABS) model was developed via AnyLogic® University 8.6.0 simulation software, Chicago, IL, U.S., in order to accurately estimate energy cost and benefits of a building with a photovoltaic-green roof system. The proposed approach was applied to estimate energy reduction cost of the Keith... [more]

To solve the contradiction between achieving long-term economic growth and reducing the consumption of certain types of resources, the concept of sustainable resource saving economic development must be put into practice. The purpose of this research is to establish criteria, develop indicators, and identify factors of the sustainable energy-saving economic development, as well as to test the developed theoretical provisions using the example of natural gas consumption by different countries. To achieve this goal, various methods were used, including economic and mathematical modeling, time series analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis, and so on. The criteria were formalized, according to which a certain type of economic development can be attributed to energy saving both at the level of the state economy as a whole and at the level of individual industries and enterprises. It was established that the formalized criteria of the sustainable energy-saving economic development ha... [more]

Construction is a powerful industry that is not indifferent to the environment. Neither the maintenance of buildings in a proper technical condition nor their eventual demolition is indifferent to the environment. The main threats to the environment are still the inefficient use of construction materials and energy needed for their production and installation, as well as the emission of harmful substances to the environment at the stage of operation of buildings and their demolition. This article discusses the importance of wood as a renewable material in terms of its physical and mechanical properties. The restoration of forest areas is of great importance to the global ecosystem and the sustainable development system, reducing the threat of global warming and the greenhouse effect by reducing CO2 levels. In addition, demolition wood can be reused in construction, can be safely recycled as it quickly decomposes, or can be used as a source of renewable energy. The preservation of exist... [more]