The transition to a climate-neutral economy presents a particular challenge for the areas where the economy is based on rich lignite resources. One of them is the Bełchatów Basin Area in Poland. The complexity of the phenomena occurring in the area of transformation requires an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to development planning and managing. It is important to create stable conditions, allowing for the introduction of necessary changes, including the involvement of various stakeholders. The research is aimed at identifying the challenges faced by the region with a lignite-based economy, the inhibitors of the transformation process, and recommendations for public policy. During the research, secondary and primary data were analysed with the use of triangulation, which allowed to combine various techniques and sources, as well as an in-depth description and multi-faceted understanding of the case under study. The study poses a key question as to whether the public authorit... [more]

The introduction of the new round of electricity reform policies has made the electricity sales companies’ trading environment increasingly complex. In the medium- and long-term market and spot market, following the new policy-oriented optimization of trading decisions is the focus of electricity sales companies. The main objective of this study is to consider the impact of the latest policies of China’s current electricity reform on each subject of electricity trading and to propose a method for electricity sales companies to make optimal decisions on renewable energy source (RES) power and conventional energy source (CES) power mixed with power trading in the medium- and long-term and spot markets to improve the efficiency of electricity market trading, promoting the consumption of renewable energy and helping the synergistic development of the electricity market and the tradable green certificate (TGC) market. This paper first discusses the impact of the new electricity reform polic... [more]

Climate change and related national mitigation targets make the decarbonization of the power sector an urgent need. The power sector faces the challenge of considering the design and interaction between emission reduction policies, which can sometimes counteract each other. This study proposes a framework that can be used to quantitatively study the qualitative link between carbon pricing and capacity pricing. The framework is validated through a case study in Hokkaido, Japan, and used to further investigate the interaction between the two policies through a System Dynamics simulation model and scenario design. The results indicate that a carbon price would promote the introduction of wind power, as well as the reduction in fossil fuels, while the capacity price will mitigate the boom-and-bust investment cycle and stabilize electricity prices. However, when the two policy-based prices act on the power system simultaneously, the advantages will be offset by each other. The existence of... [more]

Urban agglomerations are becoming an increasingly important factor in advancing regional development and reshaping a new pattern of regional competition. However, few studies are focused on the impact of expanding urban agglomerations on reducing carbon emissions and its possible mechanism. Based on 285 city-level panel data from 2006 to 2017, this paper uses a staggered Difference-in-Differences (DID) model to explore the reduction effect and its possible mechanism of sustainable regional development policy, characterized by urban agglomeration expansion policy in the Yangtze River Delta, on carbon emissions with policy shocks in 2010 and 2013. The results are as follows: (1) The urban agglomeration expansion policy shows a significant marginal contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions, especially for the later joined (new) cities, and the reduction effect is particularly significant in the first and third years after the expansion, indicating that there are significant short-... [more]

The World Energy Council ranks the Danish energy system among best in the world judging by the energy trilemma criteria: energy security, energy equity, and sustainability. District heating (DH) and CHPs are pivotal for this ranking. This brief historical account illustrates how a mix of historical events, collective societal experiences, cultural and political values inform the Danish history of DH and CHPs. After the global energy crisis in the 1970s, public and political sentiment called for energy independence, alternatives to imported fuels, and alternatives to nuclear power. National-scale collective heat infrastructure planning initiatives targeted the energy policy objectives: energy independence, fuel diversification, and energy efficiency, and a political culture of broad coalition agreements made the necessary long-term planning possible. In the following decades, growing environmental awareness and concern called for renewable energy resources as alternatives to fossil fuel... [more]

The decarbonization of electrical power generation systems is one of Singapore’s national political agendas to reduce national greenhouse emissions. LCA is applied to assess the trade-offs of national implementation of electricity generation from conventional fossil-fuel power plants, compared to low-carbon alternatives. The first aim of LCA is to quantify the emission inventory of national electrical generation within the geographical boundary of Singapore, and next to generate the potential environmental impacts of Global Warming Potential, Acidification, and Eutrophication. Various scenarios are tested for a projected diversity of fuel resource mixes considered for years 2030 and 2040 and a hypothetical scenario where 100% renewable energy is employed and imported as the nation transitions towards a low-carbon energy future. Further discussions on the additional LCA model indicators should be included for the potential of low-carbon hydrogen application.

Low-carbon building regulations are acknowledged as critical instruments to facilitate the building industry’s decarbonization transition. However, recent studies have shown that non-compliance with low-carbon requirements is under-researched, leading to a significant divergence between policy intentions and actual performance. In light of this, the paper aims to provide a synthesis of existing research on non-compliance with low-carbon building regulations. It does this using a systematic literature review combined with bibliometric and text mining techniques. Through reviewing 26 scholarly works from the last decade, the paper demonstrates a peak production year around 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement, with the USA and Australia as key countries of concern. Subsequently, the study reveals three focused research areas: the development of building policy during the low-carbon transition; the role of building energy performance requirements in achieving low-carbon buildings; and bu... [more]

Promoting the development of new energy vehicles is one of the important measures to ensure energy security and deal with global warming. Technological innovation is an inexhaustible driving force for the development of the new energy vehicle industry. This study considered listed enterprises in China’s new energy vehicle industry as research samples and used the fixed effect model to study the impact of government subsidies on the quantity and quality of technological innovation in the new energy vehicle industry. The empirical results show that government subsidies have a significant positive impact on the quantity of technological innovation in the new energy vehicle industry; however, government subsidies have no significant impact on the quality of technological innovation. Government subsidies increase the quantity of technological innovation in the new energy vehicle industry by increasing R&D investment, mitigating financing constraints, and improving the external attention of... [more]

The disadvantages of fossil fuels and their impact on the environment have made the transition to renewable energy sources essential to cover our energy needs. However, different energy resources have a different impact on energy poverty conditions in the world, an issue that is important to examine and properly address. This study examines the impact that fossil fuels final energy consumption in households per capita and renewables and biofuels final energy consumption in households per capita have on energy poverty conditions in Europe, using panel data from 28 European countries for the time period 2004−2019 and static and dynamic regression models, while also performing various econometric tests. The findings indicate that GDP per capita and fossil fuels are linked to an inverse relationship to energy poverty conditions. Renewables and biofuels are also linked to an inverse relationship to the inability to keep homes adequately warm and the presence of leaks, damp, or rot in the dw... [more]

Energy Intensive Industries (EII) are high users of energy and some of these facilities are extremely dependent on Natural Gas for processing heat production. In European countries, where Natural Gas is mostly imported from external producers, the increase in international Natural Gas prices is making it difficult for some industries to deliver the required financial results. Therefore, they are facing complex challenges that could cause their delocalization in regions with lower energy costs. European countries lack on-site Natural Gas resources and the plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the industrial sector make it necessary to find an alternative. Many different processes cannot be electrified, and in these cases, synthetic methane is one of the solutions and also represents an opportunity to reduce external energy supply dependency. This study analyzes the current development of power-to-gas technological solutions that could be implemented in large industrial consumers t... [more]

In the context of the ever-growing demand for energy, especially electric energy, from renewable sources, there has been great interest in photovoltaic energy generation. The speed at which the penetration of photovoltaic technology can grow, however, does not simply depend on supply and demand but also on the various policies and schemes adopted by countries around the world. These, in turn, play decisive roles in investment decisions and determine how projects are approached. Investors in photovoltaic (PV) systems need to be aware of the country-specific risk factors for investments and the regulatory environment. The aim of this research was to explore which managerial, economic and technical aspects should be considered in a causal approach when designing PV power plants with over 50 kW of capacity in the Hungarian regulatory environment for the success of the project. The innovative significance of the study is that it presents a validated, practically usable model for the realiza... [more]

Investment opportunities are analyzed from the perspective of the variables that influence risk. The present study analyzes some energy characteristics using data from the Eurostat Data Browser. First, we identified a gap in energy research. Second, we proposed a multicriteria analysis using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). An algorithm was developed to simulate how experts think to determine pairwise comparisons. A procedure identified the levels of importance of each criterion and alternative based on extracted data from the Eurostat website. The method was used to rate countries according to data regarding their energy policy results. The present study shows that applying the AHP method is possible without expert support and using data regarding the theme studied. The results show that Malta and Estonia are the most suitable countries to receive investments since they are presently at the top of the energy security ranking. The selected set of criteria seems to properly corresp... [more]

Energy policy investments are usually evaluated using a cost-benefit analysis (CBA), which requires an estimation of the social discount rate (SDR). The choice of SDR can be crucial for the outcome of the appraisal, as energy-related investments generate long-term impacts affecting climate change. Once discounted, these impacts are highly sensitive to slight changes in the value of the SDR. Some countries (the UK and France) switched from a constant SDR to the declining rate scheme—a solution that limits the impact sensitivity. To our knowledge, none of the CEE countries apply DDR in CBA. While a constant SDR is a relatively well-established approach, declining SDRs are estimated to be used much less frequently, particularly for CEE EU member countries and energy policies. The rationale for the decline can rest on uncertainty over future discount rates, as shown by the approach developed by Weitzman and Gollier, which extends the classical Ramsey model. We applied this approach in our... [more]

SOx and NOx emissions originating from the combustion of fuels during the operation of industrial boilers are one of the primary contributors to regional and local air pollution, which have major effects on human well-being and ecosystems. As governmental bodies attempt to regulate and enforce emission norms, the industries operating the boilers are presented with an opportunity to optimise their fuel mix configurations to achieve a reduction in SOx, NOx, and CO2 emissions while ensuring the financial sustainability of plant operations. In this study, a System Dynamic simulation model is constructed from the perspective of an individual plant to facilitate the analysis of SOx, NOx, and CO2 emissions and the expenditure incurred through energy use and pollution control systems under different fuel-mix configurations, market conditions, and policy scenarios. The model facilitates the identification of alternative fuel-mix configurations to replace existing single-fuel firing systems whil... [more]

This article focuses on residents’ perception of smart and sustainable transport in the city, and on local and central government policy towards sustainable and smart mobility transition, using Lodz, a city in Poland, as an example. Its purpose is to examine residents’ opinions about the development of a sustainable, intelligent transportation system (ITS) for the city and learn about their awareness of the benefits of ITS development. The article discusses findings of a survey conducted in 2022 on a sample of 250 residents of Lodz. The data obtained from the survey were subjected to statistical analyses: correlation, exploratory factor analysis, and linear regression. The results suggest there is a correlation between the assessment of a sustainable and intelligent transportation system and residents’ perception of benefits that it offers. In addition, government, regional, and municipal transportation strategies were qualitatively analysed to identify the preferred trends featuring i... [more]

Improving energy efficiency includes a number of measures implemented as part of the greening of the energy industry, which in turn is a prerequisite for the creation of a sustainable energy industry to ensure energy and environmental security for the world. Despite the adoption of the EU directives on energy efficiency, there is still insufficient public awareness in this area in Poland and Slovakia. This is particularly surprising because improving energy efficiency not only brings national and global benefits, but also has a significant impact on the well-being of individuals and households. The main purpose of the paper is to analyze the national policies of Poland and Slovakia, which are based on the European Directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency, and which introduce new measures aimed not only at increasing energy efficiency, but also at increasing the well-being of households and individuals. Methods of desk research and content analysis were used. The current situation in b... [more]

The energy management system (EMS) of hybridization and electrification plays a pivotal role in improving the stability and cost-effectiveness of future vehicles. Existing efforts mainly concentrate on specific optimization targets, like fuel consumption, without sufficiently taking into account the degradation of on-board power sources. In this context, a novel multi-objective energy management strategy based on deep reinforcement learning is proposed for a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), explicitly conscious of lithium-ion battery (LIB) wear. To be specific, this paper mainly contributes to three points. Firstly, a non-parametric reward function is introduced, for the first time, into the twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) strategy, to facilitate the optimality and adaptability of the proposed energy management strategy and to mitigate the effort of parameter tuning. Then, to cope with the problem of state redundancy, state space refinement techniques are included i... [more]

This research aims to identify the influence of fiscal policy, financial development and economic growth on the increase of renewable consumption in Romania. To achieve our objective, we employ bivariate regressions through the Autoregressive Distributed Lag method, over the 2000−2020 period, to examine these influences. We find clear evidence that the variables observed (implicit tax rate on energy, external debt stocks, real GDP per capita, environmental tax revenues from energy taxes, and market capitalisation of listed domestic companies) have significant effects on the use of renewable energy. Four unidirectional causal relationships were identified in the long run: two from independent variables towards the dependent variable and two from the dependent variables towards two other independent variables. The importance of this study is that its results can contribute to the finding of the most suitable solutions to improve renewable energy consumption in Romania and mitigate the im... [more]

As Alberta increases conventional solar power generation, land-use conflicts with agriculture increase. A solution that enables low-carbon electricity generation and continued (in some cases, increased) agricultural output is the co-locating of solar photovoltaics (PV) and agriculture: agrivoltaics. This review analyzes policies that impact the growth of agrivoltaics in Alberta. Solar PV-based electricity generation is governed by three regulations based on system capacity. In addition, agrivoltaics falls under various legislations, frameworks, and guidelines for land utilization. These include the Land Use Framework, Alberta Land Stewardship Act, Municipal Government Act, Special Areas Disposition, Bill 22, and other policies, which are reviewed in the agrivoltaics context. Several policies are recommended to support the rapid deployment of agrivoltaics. Openly accessible agrivoltaics research will help optimize agrivoltaic systems for the region, and can be coupled with public educat... [more]

Poland has a large potential for biogas production from agricultural sources and food waste. This potential is still poorly used. There are many reasons for this state of affairs. We can indicate both the policy of the state towards renewable energy sources (RES) with a small amount of energy from biogas contracted at auctions, investment risk, and especially low return on investment in the absence of investment support. An important reason is also the limited state budget. The purpose of this work was to determine the endogenous factors that determine ROE, the direction of the impact of these factors, as well as the strategy of biogas plants in shaping the ROE level. The DuPont model was used in the analysis of ROE changes. We used the deviation method to determine the impact of the various factors on ROE. Against the background of the energy sector in Poland, the value of ROE in the examined biogas plants should be considered satisfactory, and in 2020 it was, on average, 13.9%. The d... [more]

The block caving mining method has become increasingly popular in the last two decades. Meanwhile, Indonesia has several potential ore bodies which have not yet determined suitable mining methods. The references to block caving mining projects worldwide and the potency of metal deposits in Indonesia were reviewed to determine the requirements of ore bodies suitable for mining using the transformed block caving method. This method can be applied on a blocky ore body with a thickness of 200−800 m, various rock mass strengths until 300 MPa, from low to high (from 0.3% Cu until more than 1.0% Cu), but of uniform grade and at a depth from 500 to 2200 m. The technical specifications for running block caving mines have been synthesized, including preparation methods, undercutting strategy, mine design, mining equipment and monitoring. Considering the requirements and the successful practice of the block caving project in the Grasberg Caving Complex as a role model, the Indonesian government s... [more]

Nepal possesses a good solar resource, and there has been increasing interest in the use of photovoltaic systems. About 1.1 million solar home systems, rated at nearly 30 MWp, have been installed across Nepal. With the introduction of net metering by the Nepal Electricity Authority, an increase in rooftop photovoltaics (RPV) is expected. However, to inform any policy developments around increased electricity generation, and the uptake of RPV, there is a need to quantify the potential of such systems (a situation mirrored in many developing countries). To this end, this study utilized a hierarchical geospatial technique based on open-source data to estimate the potential output from RPV in several cities in Nepal (Kathmandu, Pokhara, Butwal, Nepalgunj, and Biratnagar). It was found that the potential theoretical output of RPV ranged from 637 GWh per annum, in Kathmandu, to 50 GWh per annum in Butwal. Moreover, the total RPV potential from urban households of Nepal was estimated to be in... [more]

The pulp and paper industry (PPI) has several opportunities to contribute to meeting prevailing climate targets. It can cut its own CO2 emissions, which currently account for 2% of global industrial fossil CO2 emissions, and it has an opportunity to produce renewable energy, fuels, and materials for other sectors. The purpose of this study is to improve understanding of the decarbonization prospects of the PPI. The study provides insights on the magnitude of needed annual renewal rates for several possible net-zero target years of industrial fossil CO2 emissions in the PPI and discusses decarbonization opportunities, namely, energy and material efficiency improvement, fuel switching, electrification, renewable energy production, carbon capture, and new products. The effects of climate policies on the decarbonization opportunities are critically evaluated to provide an overview of the current and future business environment of the European PPI. The focus is on Europe, but other regions... [more]

With the promotion of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and the construction of renewable-dominated electric power systems, renewable energy will become the main power source of power systems in China. How to ensure the accommodation of renewable energy will also be the core issue in the future development process of renewable-dominated electric power systems. In this context, shared energy storage (SES), a novel business model combined with energy storage technologies and the sharing economy, has the potential to play an important role in renewable energy accommodation scenarios. This paper systematically organizes the application prospect, development status and key technologies of SES in the renewable energy accommodation scenario in the context of China, providing helpful references for the promotion of the business model. Firstly, a typical SES framework for renewable energy accommodation is described, and three basic forms of SES in this scenario are presented. Moreover,... [more]

Poland is a big user of fossil fuels for electricity and heat production. The most important fossil fuel is hard, brown coal and the Polish energy system is based on this source. However, the world has begun to decarbonize the climate and reduce the carbon dioxide and methane which are the main gasses impacting climate change. The main aim of this paper was to recognize changes in Polish coal sector. We focused our attention to the economic situation and employment in coal sector in Poland. The time rage included 1989−2020 and the prognosis 2021−2025. The Polish coal sector faced dramatic changes. The number of hard coal mines decreased from 70 in 1990 to 21 in 2020. In the same timeframe, the prices for hard coal increased from 12.37 PLN/dt to 313.27 PLN/dt. The employment decreased from more than 350 thousand to less than 100 thousand people in hard coal mines. The decrease changes are the effect of strict policies of the European Union. The economic situation of Polish hard coal min... [more]