Smart sustainable cities represent a great challenge for the modern world. Generation Z (Gen Z), whose representatives are now entering adult life, will play a key role in the implementation of this concept. The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between the evaluation of smart mobility’s importance for a smart city and the attitudes and behaviours of Generation Z members in the context of sustainability, use of ICT, and their declarative and actual participation in smart city activities. The diagnostic survey method was used to achieve the research objective. The authors designed the questionnaire based on a literature analysis. The research sample consisted of 484 representatives of Generation Z—students of universities located in a smart city, Lublin (Poland). The collected data was statistically analysed using the following methods and statistical tests: Cronbach’s alpha, Pearson’s chi-square test for independence, symmetric measures: Cramer’s V,... [more]

The tobacco industry is an important contributor to realizing the carbon reduction goal. Less attention is paid to the carbon emissions of the tobacco industry. The tobacco production system is generally a carbon sink, where carbon sequestration by photosynthesis in tobacco planting and by soil are sufficient to offset the carbon emissions of the tobacco production system. This work proposed an integrated framework of life-cycle assessment (LCA) and Source-Sink Model to determine the optimal allocation of carbon sources to sinks with the objective of maximizing the profitable external benefits. From an economic perspective, internal carbon sources could be offset by the internal carbon sink of the tobacco production system. The additional internal carbon sinks can be transferred in the form of carbon trading, increasing external revenue. A case-study tobacco manufacturing plant in Sichuan, China, was chosen to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed work. This study assesses the ca... [more]

Since energy consumption in developing countries has increased significantly, motivating energy-saving habits among citizens is an important issue both from the academic and industrial perspectives. Thus, this study aims to predict consumer purchase intention for energy-efficient household appliances based on an extended model of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). This study incorporated two additional constructs of moral norms and environmental concern in the model of the TPB. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 1155 Bangladeshi consumers, and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) regression was used to test the hypotheses. Results show that attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control significantly influence consumer purchase intention of energy-efficient appliances (EEAs). This study also proved that the extension of moral norms is a significant predictor of consumers’ purchase intention in the classic theory of planned behavi... [more]

Road lighting is essential to ensure the safety and comfort of its users, especially in preventing accidents and aiding visual tasks. The monumental shift from conventional road lighting technology to light-emitting diode (LED) lighting is driven by energy efficiency, associated cost savings, and environmental concerns in the road lighting system. This study aims to investigate the performance of LED in substitution for high-pressure sodium vapour (HPSV) road lighting in Penang Bridge, Malaysia using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a frontier-based optimisation approach, by modelling energy, cost, and environment together, as none of the previous studies has included energy, cost, and environmental concerns together in one model. The LED renewable energy industry that promotes zero carbon emissions has the potential to establish an affordable, clean, and carbon-free energy system for road lighting, especially in rural areas.

: This paper presents an aspect of asset tracking and storage conditions. This paper aims to fill the gap in the development of Industry 4.0 in terms of fully digital asset tracking to be implemented by medium and large-size manufacturing and logistics facilities. The article presents an innovative technology for the remote monitoring of chemical raw materials, including fertilizers, during their storage and transport from the place of manufacture to the local distributor or recipient.: The method assumes the monitoring and identification of special transport bags, so-called “big-bags,” through embedded RFID tags or LEB labels and monitoring the key parameters of their content, i.e., temperature, humidity, insolation, and pressure, using a measuring micro-station that is placed in the transported raw material.: The automation of inference based on the collected information about the phenomenon in question (the distribution of parameters: pressure, temperature, and humidity), and expert... [more]

As the population continues to rise, the demand for resources and environmentally friendly management of produced wastes has shown a significant increase in concern. To decrease the impact of these wastes on the environment, it is important to utilize the wastes in producing and/or recovering usable products to provide for the sustainable management of resources. One non-renewable and rapidly diminishing resource is phosphorus, which is used in several products, the most important being its use in manufacturing chemical fertilizer. With the increase in demand but reduction in availability of naturally occurring mineral phosphorus, it is important to investigate other sources of phosphorus. Phosphorus is most commonly recovered through struvite (magnesium ammonium phosphate) precipitation. The recovery of phosphorus from various wastewater has been well established and documented with recovery rates mostly above 90%. However, one of the major drawbacks of the recovery is the high cost o... [more]

Natural gas generation is the result of organic matter degradation under the effects of biodegradation and thermal degradation. Early Cambrian black shales in the Upper Yangtze Region are rich in organic matter and have shown great shale gas potentiality in recent years. Nevertheless, the enrichment mechanism and distribution of organic matter in these black shales between different sedimentary settings, such as intra-platform basin, slope, and deep basin, are still poorly understood. In this paper, based mainly on elemental geochemistry, a comprehensive study of the marine redox conditions, primary productivity, sedimentation rate, terrigenous input, hydrothermal activity, and water mass restrictions was conducted on the Early Cambrian Niutitang black shale in the Upper Yangtze Region. Our data showed that an intra-platform basin received a higher terrigenous input and that it deposited under more restricted conditions than the slope and deep basin settings. The primary productivity i... [more]

Low carbon and renewable energy technologies help reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which cause climate change [...]

The fact that personality traits play an important role when it comes to predicting people’s entrepreneurial behavior is currently indisputable. However, so far, the majority of subject literature has focused on employee characteristics in developed countries. To address this gap, research was conducted, including 188 entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises (SME) and 21 highest-level employees in Poland—one of the countries with the most hostile and turbulent environment for entrepreneurial operations in the world. The five personality traits (Big Five) were evaluated using the 60-item scale. There were three objectives of this study: to identify the differences between entrepreneurs and the most effective, highest-level employees, in the context of personality trait intensities, to determine the level of specific trait(s) intensities (OCEAN) of an effective entrepreneur. Finally, to determine whether it is possible to construct a model based on BIG5 to estimate the probability o... [more]

The flue evaporation of desulfurization wastewater can solve the problem that it is difficult to remove some heavy metal ions and chloride ions by conventional methods. A large amount of chloride ions in desulfurization wastewater can also promote the catalytic oxidation removal of Hg in the flue gas. The migration character of chloride ions in the flue evaporation process of desulfurization wastewater was studied by using the coal-fired thermal state experimental platform. The concentrations of Hg0 and Hg2+ in the flue gas at the inlet and outlet of selective catalytic reduction denitration (SCR), electrostatic precipitator (ESP), and wet desulfurization (WFGD) devices were tested, and the synergistic removal of traditional pollutant removal equipment by flue evaporation of desulfurization wastewater was analyzed. The influence of Hg and the effect of the evaporation of desulfurization wastewater at different positions on the removal of Hg in the flue gas were compared and analyzed, a... [more]

The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union remains at the top tier of the union’s legacies with the aim of bequeathing a sustainable future for all. Series of actions geared towards reforming the environmental and climate goals of the CAP are constantly being taken. The objective of this paper is to verify if the environmental and climatic CAP measures proposed in Poland’s Strategic Development Plan for Agriculture, for the years 2023−2027, reflect farmers’ preferences regarding the structure of the CAP support. To achieve this goal, we model a hypothetical strategic game involving farmers from different regions. The outcomes of the game were derived from the ex-post analysis of EU funds, in the application for environmental and climatic CAP measures, in addition to the results of simulations of the partial equilibrium model for the agricultural sector (CAPRI). It was found out that farmers from regions with disadvantaged agrarian structures would find it more difficult to co... [more]

Hydrocarbon biodegradation rates in the deep-sea have been largely determined under atmospheric pressure, which may lead to non-representative results. In this work, we aim to study the response of deep-sea microbial communities of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea (EMS) to oil contamination at in situ environmental conditions and provide representative biodegradation rates. Seawater from a 600 to 1000 m depth was collected using a high-pressure (HP) sampling device equipped with a unidirectional check-valve, without depressurization upon retrieval. The sample was then passed into a HP-reactor via a piston pump without pressure disruption and used for a time-series oil biodegradation experiment at plume concentrations, with and without dispersant application, at 10 MPa and 14 °C. The experimental results demonstrated a high capacity of indigenous microbial communities in the deep EMS for alkane degradation regardless of dispersant application (>70%), while PAHs were highly degraded when oi... [more]

Coal and organic-rich shale in the Yan’an Formation in the southwestern margin of the Ordos Basin are widely developed, which is an important fact for oil and gas exploration in China that has been widely explored for a long time. In this paper, detailed sequence division and sedimentary environment analyses of the Yan’an Formation in the Pengyang area on the southwestern margin of the Ordos Basin were conducted using field outcrops, drilling cores, logging, wavelet transform and organic geochemistry. The results showed that the succession consists of some units with distinctly different characteristics. Based on the petrographic assemblage and transform wavelet characteristics, the Yan’an Formation in this area can be divided into a long-term cycle, five medium-term cycles, and eleven short-term cycles, among which coal and carbonaceous shale were mainly developed in the short-term cycles I2, III1, III2, V1 and V2. Coal and organic-rich mud shale have been developed in the Yan’an Form... [more]

The efficiency potential of a small-size solar-pumped laser is studied here. The solar laser head was composed of a fused silica aspheric lens and a conical pump cavity, which coupled and redistributed the concentrated solar radiation from the focal zone of a parabolic mirror with an effective collection area of 0.293 m2 to end-side pump a Ce (0.1 at%):Nd (1.1 at%):YAG rod of 2.5 mm diameter and 25 mm length. Optimum solar laser design parameters were found through Zemax© non-sequential ray-tracing and LASCAD™ analysis. The utilization of the Ce:Nd:YAG medium with small diameter pumped by a small-scale solar concentrator was essential to significantly enhance the end-side pump solar laser efficiency and thermal performance. For 249 W incoming solar power at an irradiance of 850 W/m2, 11.2 W multimode solar laser power was measured, corresponding to the record solar-to-laser power conversion efficiency of 4.50%, being, to the best of our knowledge, 1.22 times higher than the previous re... [more]

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are a promising technology for reducing the tailpipe emissions of CO2 as well as air pollutants, especially in urban environments. However, several studies raise questions over their after-treatment exhaust efficiency when their internal combustion engine (ICE) ignites. The rationale is the high ICE load during the cold start in combination with the cold conditions of the after-treatment devices. In this study, we measured the solid particle number (SPN) emissions of two Euro 6d and one Euro 6d-TEMP gasoline direct injection (GDI) PHEVs (electric range 52−61 km) all equipped with a gasoline particulate filter, in the laboratory and on-road with different states of charge of the rechargeable electric energy storage system (REESS) and ambient temperatures. All vehicles met the regulation limits but it was observed that, even for fully charged REESS, when the ICE ignited SPN emissions were similar or even higher in some cases compared to the operat... [more]

Contemporary cities need new solutions to reduce the harmful impact of freight transport, such as traffic congestion, air pollution, and noise emissions, which have increased in the last few years. This especially concerns central parts of cities due to the architectural features of urban space. The concept of green logistics intends to replace currently used combustion engine vehicles with zero-emissions technologies such as the use of cargo bikes to deliver goods to final recipients located in the city districts with dense urban development. However, the use of cargo bikes for certain architectural, transport, and business conditions must be justified: the positive impact of that innovative means of transport should be evaluated and assessed by decision-makers. We propose a method to evaluate the environmental impact of cargo bikes that replace conventional vehicles in the central district of a city. Our approach assumes simulations of freight travel demand in the selected city area,... [more]

Urban metabolism has emerged over the past decades as an important new paradigm of regional and urban sustainability governance towards a Chinese national scheme of ‘carbon neutrality’ by 2060. Hebei province in China faces twin pressures related to its supply of water and energy resources, which has brought humans and nature into conflict. Overcoming this tension in the human-land relationship in Hebei and determining a suitable development path for the future has become a core issue for the achievement of coordinated development within the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei region. This paper constructs a system to simulate the metabolism of water, energy, and human relationships, and uses this model to carry out simulations for Hebei province. The model establishes five scenarios: a natural development scenario, economic growth scenario, water conservation development scenario, energy conservation development scenario, and low carbon scenario. The simulation results show that, without interventi... [more]

Lignocellulosic biomass is an abundant resource that can be valorized for the production of bioenergy. However, studies aiming to quantify the amount of biogas production potential per km forest road are scarce in the literature. In this study, fresh pine needles, pine needle litter, pine branches, and pine bark were digested in batch reactors under mesophilic conditions after a grinding/milling pre-treatment. All samples were collected from a low-altitude Mediterranean Pinus forest (North Greece) adjacent to a category G forest road with a gentle slope. The methane yield of fresh pine needles was between 115 and 164 NmL g−1 volatile solids (VS), depending on the Pinus tree size. Pine needle litter produced a significantly lower methane yield (between 58 and 77 NmL g−1 VS), followed by pine bark (85 NmL g−1 VS) and pine branches (138 NmL g−1 VS). Considering the quantity of pine needle litter accumulated on adjacent forest roads (600 ± 200 g m−2), it was possible to calculate the biome... [more]

Low-carbon development is a prerequisite and a fundamental element of sustainable development [...]

The industry is a key driver of economic development. However, changes caused by introduction of modern technologies, and increasing complexity of products and production, directly affect the industrial enterprises and workers. The critics of the Industry 4.0 paradigm emphasized its orientation to new technologies and digitalization in a technocratic way. Therefore, the new industrial paradigm Industry 5.0 appeared very soon and automatically triggered a debate about the role of, and reasons for applying, the new paradigm. Industry 5.0 is complementing the existing Industry 4.0 paradigm with the orientation to the worker who has an important role in the production process, and that role has been emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, there is a brief discussion on main drivers and enablers for introduction of these new paradigms, then a literature-based analysis is carried out to highlight the differences between two paradigms from three important aspects—people, or... [more]

Improving energy efficiency and minimizing environmental concerns through environmental laws and green taxes are regarded as the primary motivating factors of climate change policy. This analysis clarifies the significance of green taxes in lowering energy use and intensity from 1994 to 2020. As part of our contribution to the literature on energy economics, this study examines how green taxes interact with energy intensity and consumption in four Nordic nations. Environmental policies and sustainable development goals (SDGs) are driving new research into the effects of green taxes on energy consumption and intensity. According to the outcomes of fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), panel dynamic ordinary least square (PDOLS), and panel quantile regression, a green tax helps to reduce total energy consumption. It increases energy efficiency by motivating governments, companies, and citizens to encourage innovation in environment-related technology. When it comes to creating a... [more]

Aim: In this paper, we analyze the potential of various digital tools such as gamification-based applications or digital currencies in enabling the social engagement in climate change mitigation processes by encouraging pro-environmental behaviors. Therefore, as a result of this study, we aim to develop a conceptual framework for a green digital tool, dedicated to cities seeking to shape their resilience by supporting bottom-up initiatives and encouraging residents to join the effort through educational interventions. Methods: The study was divided into four steps using a variety of methodological approaches, including a review of the SLR literature, analysis of the successes and failures of existing solutions, and qualitative workshops with stakeholders. Findings: The conceptual basis of the proposed solution has been developed based on the existing knowledge on pro-environmental nudging and lessons learnt from existing solutions. Value/originality: The developed conceptual framework... [more]

The last three years have been a period of many challenges related to the dynamically changing conditions of the economic environment. Among these many changes, some of the most important for the further functioning of private and public entities are those related to the instability of the energy market. Rapidly rising energy prices increase the costs of implementing public tasks. They also greatly increase the search for innovative, energy-saving and environmentally friendly ways of performing municipal tasks. The main aim of the article is to present the concept of a smart village as an instrument for the implementation of public tasks in rural areas. The theoretical basis of the smart village concept is the basic point of reference. The implementation of the assumptions of the smart village concept in Poland gives municipalities the possibility of an innovative approach to the implementation of local public services. In addition, examples of good practices implemented by rural local... [more]

This paper focuses on possible power generation by micro-hydro turbines integrated into lowland wastewater systems, which convert the potential energy of effluents in pipes into electric power. While other European countries have widely invested in this technology, Lithuania and other Baltic countries are still behind with their potential development rate. A search for potential micro-hydro sites was carried out, and a methodology for assessing water resources for an ungauged wastewater network is proposed herein. Particularities of wastewater flow patterns are briefly reviewed, and turbine operational constraints are analyzed. The hydro turbines available on the market to be installed in wastewater systems that meet lowland conditions are discussed. Available tools on the hydropower market to conduct a preliminary assessment of potential sites for urban water networks are considered. Multicriteria analysis is performed to select optimal projects by assessing the relevant economic, tec... [more]

The European Union takes significant steps to support the development of the electric sector of the automotive market. This is confirmed by the signed declaration in Glasgow, which leads to a ban on the sale of cars with combustion engines from 2035. This document changes the car industry and makes it dependent on electricity production. The problem identified in this article is the actual impact of implemented solutions concerning the type of engine in cars offered for sale in Czechia, Germany, and Poland. Therefore, the aim of this scientific paper is car engines’ multilevel comparative analysis. The aim of the article is accompanied by a research question: are electric vehicles less harmful to the natural environment? The paper compares cars of the same producer, class, and type with petrol, diesel, hybrid (petrol-electric), and electric engines in terms of the environmental impact. The research method is a comparative SUV analysis supported by the comparison of selected countries’... [more]