Shifting from fossil to renewable energy sources is a major global challenge, and in this context, the European Union has promoted sustainable and environmentally friendly growth as early as the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. To date, European institutions have promulgated a series of environmental regulations and directives aimed at promoting and imposing adoption by member states of internal regulations. This paper is focused on Western Europe, and it explores, for each state under analysis, energy policies adopted, the results achieved and recommendations for the future growth of renewable energy. The results show that in countries where energy policy is not fragmented, the yield in renewable energies has been higher, and also in the states where more and various forms of subsidies are foreseen, growth seems to be greater. Finally, the paper provides useful recommendations and future policy implications for states that have not met the 2020 targets.

One of the main elements for increasing energy efficiency in large-scale buildings is identified in the correct management and control of the Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, particularly those with Heat Pumps (HPs). The present study aimed to evaluate the perspective of energy savings achievable with the implementation of an optimal control of the HVAC with HPs. The proposed measures involve the use of a variable air volume system, demand-controlled ventilation, an energy-aware control of the heat recovery equipment, and an improved control of the heat pump and chiller supply water temperature. The analysis has been applied to an academic building located in Pisa and is carried out by means of dynamic simulation. The achieved energy saving can approach values of more than 80% if compared with actual plants based on fossil fuel technologies. A major part of this energy saving is linked to the use of heat pumps as thermal generators as well as to the implementati... [more]

The rapid growth of aviation over the past fifty years has resulted in numerous negative environmental impacts due to the combustion of fossil fuels in aircraft engines. This paper presents the relationship between air transport and GHG emissions. Based on data on the development of aviation, the level of GHG emissions from transport, environmental tax revenues and the amount of GDP per capita in the countries of the European Union, an attempt was made to create a typification that would illustrate the interaction of GHG emissions with air transport, environmental taxes and GDP in the years 2009−2018. The next step to confirm the obtained results was the application of statistical methods: the TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method of linear ordering and the Perkal index. Based on the study findings, the analyzed countries were divided into three groups: the group of innovators, the stable group and the group of students. The analysis revealed... [more]

India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) aim to increase the share of non-fossil fuel, especially renewables, in power generation. But at the same time, it mentions that coal is likely to dominate the power generation in the short and medium term to meet the increase in demand and support the intermittency of renewable energy-based power generation. Thus, additional efforts to transform the thermal power generation to a more efficient and less emitting one in the near term by increasing the use of natural gas (a fossil fuel with a lower emission factor than coal) may be planned towards achieving India’s additional mitigation commitments. The paper presents the implications of a proposed increase in the share of natural gas in thermal power generation of India by looking into the trade-off between emission mitigation and energy security. Along with a Reference Scenario, three alternative emission scenarios are proposed to understand the likely impacts of increased penetration o... [more]

The paper will examine, in detail, (a) the norms that can be featured under the category “Green Deal” connected to the European Commission, (b) their application to Spain, and (c) the different patterns of action and development models that have been shaped by this framework over the last 20 years. These patterns are particularly relevant currently, as the COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the importance of advancing towards new patterns of local sustainability endowed with higher resilience. The notion of cognitive sustainability will be one of the added values to the current reflections on sustainability in general, and energetic sustainability in particular.

In times of climate change and dwindling fossil resources, the need for sustainable renewable energy technologies gains importance, increasingly fast. However, the state of the art technologies are energy intensive in their production, like monocrystalline photovoltaic, or even consist of not recyclable composite material, in the case of wind turbine blades. Despite a lack in efficiency and stability, dye sensitized solar cells (DSSC) have a high potential to supplement the state of the art green energy technology in future. With low production costs and no necessity for toxic compounds DSSCs are a potential product, which could circulate in the loops of a circular economy. Therefore, with this paper, we provide the status of research on DSSC recycling and an outlook on how recycling streams could be realized in the future for glass-based DSSCs without toxic components. The overview includes work on using recycled material to build DSSCs and extending the life of a DSSC, e.g., through... [more]

The assessment of performance of water companies is essential for their regulation. In doing so, several variables and models can be employed. This study evaluates and compares the performance of a sample of English and Welsh water companies from the operational, environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives by applying the non-radial data envelopment analysis range adjusted measure model. This methodological approach allows integrating greenhouse gas emissions as undesirable output. The results indicated that the water industry performed well from an operational perspective. However, environmental inefficiency considerably exists which illustrates the difficulties of the water companies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The average eco-efficiency was 0.783 which means that while expanding water services, water companies could further reduce costs and carbon emissions by 11.7% on average. Other factors such as water treatment complexity and population density significantly affect w... [more]

Industrial environments are heterogeneous systems that create challenges of interoperability limiting the development of systems capable of working collaboratively from the point of view of machines and software. Additionally, environmental issues related to manufacturing systems have emerged during the last decades, related to sustainability problems faced in the world. Thus, the proposed work aims to present an interoperable solution based on events to reduce the complexity of integration, while creating energetic profiles for the machines to allow the optimization of their energy consumption. A publish/subscribe-based architecture is proposed, where the instantiation is based on Apache Kafka. The proposed solution was implemented in two robotic cells in the automotive industry, constituted by different hardware, which allowed testing the integration of different components. The energy consumption data was then sent to a Postgres database where a graphical interface allowed the opera... [more]

The building sector is known to have a significant environmental impact, considering that it is the largest contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions of around 36% and is also responsible for about 40% of global energy consumption. Of this, about 50% takes place during the building operational phase, while around 10−20% is consumed in materials manufacturing, transport and building construction, maintenance, and demolition. Increasing the necessity of reducing the environmental impact of buildings has led to enhancing not only the thermal performances of building materials, but also the environmental sustainability of their production chains and waste prevention. As a consequence, novel thermo-insulating building materials or products have been developed by using both locally produced natural and waste/recycled materials that are able to provide good thermal performances while also having a lower environmental impact. In this context, the aim of this work is to provide a detailed... [more]

The aim of the research is to identify and quantify the direct economic effects resulting from the improved seaport nautical access and capacity expansion. This case study considers a regional port located in the Baltic sea and relates to port users, i.e., shipping operators and shippers. The effects were identified for maritime transport by comparing transport performance in two scenarios: with-the-investment and without-the-investment. Incremental calculus addresses freights (containers, dry bulk, and cereals) traded to and from the given port, changes in size of vessels, and the shipping route alternatives vis-a-vis adjacent ports in the range. Sustainable impact concerns generalized maritime transport cost, i.e., shipping operating costs and port-to-port transit time, as well as energy consumption and external costs of maritime shipping. To capture effects, daily and unit dry bulk, as well as container shipping cost, values of time, and marginal external costs were revealed in frei... [more]

Although products can contribute to ecosystems positively, they can cause negative environmental impacts throughout their life cycles, from obtaining raw material, production, and use, to end of life. It is reported that most negative environmental impacts are decided at early design phases, which suggests that the determination of product sustainability should be considered as early as possible, such as during the conceptual design stage, when it is still possible to modify the design concept. However, most of the existing concept evaluation methods or tools are focused on assessing the feasibility or creativity of the concepts generated, lacking the measurements of sustainability of concepts. The paper explores key factors related to sustainable design with regard to environmental impacts, and describes a set of objective measures of sustainable product design concept evaluation, namely, material, production, use, and end of life. The rationales of the four metrics are discussed, wit... [more]

The refurbishment of the building stock is a key strategy towards the achievement of the climate and energy goals of the European Union. This study aims at evaluating the energy and environmental impacts associated with retrofitting a residential apartment to improve its vertical envelope thermal insulation. Two insulation materials, stone wool and cellulose fibers, are compared. The life cycle assessment methodology is applied assuming 1 m2 of retrofitted vertical envelope as functional unit. Moreover, to estimate the net energy and environmental benefits achievable in the retrofitted scenario compared with the non-retrofitted one, a second analysis is performed in which the system boundaries are expanded to include the building operational phase, and 1 m2 of walkable floor per year is assumed as reference. The results show that the use of cellulose fibers involve lower impacts in most of the assessed categories compared to stone wool, except for abiotic resource depletion. In detail,... [more]

In the face of contemporary ecological problems, including the influence of transport and mobility on the greenhouse effect, policy makers see a solution in the technology of electric vehicles (EVs). This innovation has appeared in the automotive market around the world. In this article, Rogers’ innovation diffusion concept was used to determine if and when EVs could replace combustion engine vehicles. The aim of the article is to analyze the current situation of innovative electric vehicle (EV) technology on the European Union (EU) market and the potential and possible directions of its market diffusion. As a result of the analysis of the current situation of the EU automotive markets, three groups of countries with different market conditions regarding the development of EV technology were distinguished. The classification was carried out using the K-means clustering algorithm, based on the current level of innovation and the level of development of the LPG-(Liquefied Petroleum Gas)... [more]

The rise in energy requirements and its shortfall in developing countries have affected socioeconomic life. Communities in remote mountainous regions in Asia are among the most affected by energy deprivation. This study presents the feasibility of an alternate strategy of supplying clean energy to the areas consisting of pristine mountains and forest terrain. Southeast Asia has a much-diversified landscape and varied natural resources, including abundant water resources. The current study is motivated by this abundant supply of streams which provides an excellent environment for run-of-river micro vertical axis water turbines. However, to limit the scope of the study, the rivers and streams flowing in northern areas of Pakistan are taken as the reference. The study proposes a comprehensive answer for supplying low-cost sustainable energy solutions for such remote communities. The suggested solution consists of a preliminary hydrodynamic design using Qblade, further analysis using numer... [more]

Although the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced manufacturing technologies, and cloud manufacturing contribute to developing a digital manufacturing ecosystem that enhances energy efficiency and resource utilization, manufacturing processes are vulnerable to timely production and delivery. The digital manufacturing systems in Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) minimized the human-technology interactions to foster productivity and material flow. However, there is scarce research to gauge the efficiency of these digital technologies in the entire manufacturing process; also, little is known about the collaborative efforts among countries to achieve sustainable manufacturing performance through the digitalization of the production process. Thus, this systematic review aimed to highlight the effectiveness of the digital manufacturing systems for sustainable product development and the collaborative research on the subject. We selected 52 research articles for this review by following the 2... [more]

Phototactic and polarotactic aquatic insects, such as mayflies, can be drawn to electric lighting on bridges at night. Past research investigating the effect of light intensity, polarization, and spectrum on mayflies suggests that a combination of different techniques can reduce the number of mayflies attracted to bridges. Here, various lighting strategies are systematically tested on Veterans Memorial Bridge in Pennsylvania to investigate the effect of lighting on mayflies and address safety concerns caused by their mass crowding. Isolated trials on different parts of the bridge tested the effectiveness of correlated color temperature, chromaticity, ultraviolet radiation, shielding, and polarization. Results indicate that mayflies were more attracted to ultraviolet radiation, blue and green light, and polarized light than other lighting conditions. Shielding was minimally effective in reducing the number of mayflies on the bridge when supported by the change in light source spectrum.... [more]

In terms of fuel resource, hydropower possesses a prominent advantage over any other large power plants which burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Moreover, due to the abundance in resource availability (as a domestic source in small streams and rivers), small hydropower (SHP) plants are showing prominence all over the world. SHP plants have led to improved access to electricity usage in under-developed and developing nations, thereby contributing to sustainable development goals and social empowerment. SHP, as a technology, is regarded as the largest density renewable resource with high adaptability, and low investment costs. The primary objective of the paper is to study and analyze recent developments in SHP technologies with reporting statistical figures in terms of installed capacity and MW potential in several parts of the world. Methodologies adopted by researchers to conduct techno-economic analysis of SHP projects are reviewed. Various costs involved in conducting pre-fe... [more]

The purpose of the research was to identify the factors determining the improvement of the sustainable energy management strategy in the process of building lasting value for stakeholders, identifying key activities supporting the process of improving the sustainable energy management strategy, and analyzing the degree of use of environmental indicators by organizations in Poland. In the research process, to achieve the assumed research goals, it was decided to use the following research methods: The “Delphic Method” and the CAWI method (Computer-Assisted Web Interview). The research was carried out on a sample of 102 organizations in Poland. The study identifies goals for the sustainable development of the organization, activities supporting the process of sustainable energy management, and indicators in the field of energy management. The key factors for the improvement of energy management strategies have been identified, including implementation of modern technologies, reduction of... [more]

Internet of Things (IoT) technology has advanced in recent years, leading to improvements of manufacturing processes. As a result of such improvements, environmental sustainability assessments for technologies have been requested by international control agencies. Although various assessment approaches are widely applied, IoT technology requires effective assessment methods to support the decision-making process and that incorporate qualitative measures to create quantifiable values. In this paper, a new environmental sustainability assessment method is developed to assess radio frequency identification (RFID) and wireless sensors networks (WSN). This integrated assessment method incorporates a modified and redesigned conceptual methodology based on technical project evaluation (IMATOV) and an extension of conventional lifecycle measures. The results shows the most and least important metrics. The most important metrics are the categories “electronic devices disposed of completely” and... [more]

Improving quality of life still remains the main goal of strategic documents and is promoted by leaders on the global, national, regional, and local levels. Moreover, this ambitious challenge should be consistent with the principles of sustainable development, including the social, economic, and environmental aspects. The ISO 37120 indicators within the World Council on City Data (WCCD) database may be used to monitor the urban performance over time. However, the interpretation of the results is not always easy and sometimes requires a complex analysis. The aim of this paper was to investigate the possibility of illustrating in a transparent way the urban quality of life using the utility method. This study also presents that this method may facilitate making data-driven decisions on urban management, planning and investment. Thus, it may be useful for decision makers and help cities and communities of all sizes to become more sustainable, safe and resilient, prosperous, inclusive, and... [more]

The study described in this paper uses direct evidence from processes applied for the developing economy of Indonesia, as it defines the trajectory for its future energy policy and energy research agenda. The paper addresses the research gap to make explicit the process undertaken by key stakeholders in assessing and determining the suitability, feasibility, and dynamics of the renewable energy sector. Barriers and enablers that are key in selecting the most suitable renewable energy sources for developing economies for the renewable energy development have been identified from extensive analyses of research documents alongside qualitative data from the Focus Group Discussions (FGD). The selected FGD participants encompass the collective views that cut across the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental aspects of renewable energy development in Indonesia. The information gained from the FGD gives insights into the outlook and challenges that are central to... [more]

The aim of the article is to identify and assess the relationship between the investment attractiveness of regions for agricultural enterprises and the energy factor. Classical theories of the location of agriculture emphasise the importance of the market factor. The energy factor has so far been ignored, despite the global trend related to the increasing importance of production scales and rising energy consumption in agriculture. There are also no methodological proposals that allow a comprehensive assessment of the investment attractiveness of regions for agricultural enterprises, taking into account the leading location factors. The article presents the author’s methodological model based on the weight-correlation method of valorisation of investment attractiveness of regions for economic entities that invest in agricultural production. It contains a sub-aggregate describing the energy factor. This proposal is a contribution to the theory of the location of agriculture in the field... [more]

In the last ten years, there has been a progressive improvement in rural electrification indexes in developing countries, and renewable energies are progressively being integrated into electrification programs. In Cuba, the government has set a target of 700 MW in solar photovoltaic energy by 2030, including rural electrification and off-grid systems. Within this framework, 10,000 modular systems of 300 Wp are being installed in isolated communities. Nowadays, previously diesel-electrified settlements are migrating into renewable energy technologies projects in rural Cuba. The objective of this research is to evaluate the sustainability of these changes in order to identify the implications for other developing countries, taking four different dimensions into account: environmental, technical, socioeconomic, and institutional. For this purpose, the rural communities of Yaguá (diesel-based) and Río Abajo (solar-based) in the province of Sancti Spiritus are visited and studied. Results s... [more]

Energy transitions are transforming energy systems around the globe. Such a shift has caused the power system to become a critical piece of infrastructure for the economic development of every nation on the planet. Therefore, guaranteeing its security is crucial, not only for energy purposes but also as a part of a national security strategy. This paper presents a multidimensional index developed to assess energy security of electrical systems in the long term. This tool, named the Power System Security Index (PSIx), which has been previously used for the evaluation of a country in two different time frames, is applied to evaluate the member countries of the Latin American Energy Organization, located within the Latin America and the Caribbean region, to measure its performance on energy security. Mixed results were obtained from the analysis, with clear top performers in the region such as Argentina, while there are others with broad areas of opportunity, as is the case of Haiti.

Modern data centers are playing a pivotal role in the global economic situation. Unlike high-quality source of waste heat, it is challenging to recover the decentralized and low-quality waste heat sourced from data centers due to numerous technological and economic hurdles. As such, it is of the utmost importance to explore possible pathways to maximize the energy efficiency of the data centers and to utilize their heat recovery. Absorption chiller systems are a promising technology for the recovery of waste heat at ultra-low temperatures. In fact, the low temperature heat discharged from data centers cannot be retrieved with conventional heat recovery systems. Therefore, the present study investigated feasibility of waste heat recovery from data centers using an absorption chiller system, with the ultimate goal of electrical energy production. To fulfill this objective, a techno-economic assessment of heat recovery using absorption chiller (AC) technique for the data centers with powe... [more]