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Many developing countries are attempting to develop quickly by increasing utilization of nonrenewable resources. Comparing the national metabolism of developed and developing societies can shed useful light into how efficiently the useful potential of resources is being used to identify potential pitfalls and opportunities for sustainable development. Such analysis may also help avoid and leapfrog over some of the mistakes of developed countries. Such research could assist in finding answers to some critical questions like whether developing societies like India are being more sustainable than developed societies in terms of resource utilization. Comparing historical trends of resource use across multiple societies also sheds light on how the resource mix changes with efforts toward sustainability. The primary objective of this work is to gain greater understanding of India’s economic growth over the last four decades (1970–2010) by analyzing its reliance on useful work or exergy derived from various natural resources. Such insight can help determine whether India is following a path of sustainable development. If the country is not on this path, this work can help identify opportunities for improvement. Acquiring such data was itself a formidable challenge, making this the first database of its type. This paper presents and discusses the trajectories of resource consumption and its conversion into useful work and environmental emissions from economic activities. The results show a significant increase in the country’s metabolism as it evolved from a controlled to a more open free-market economy, along with a more recent and gradual improvement in the intensity of exergy use. Comparing the trend of India’s metabolism with that of selected developing and developed economies shows India’s path to be similar in many ways. Reliance on nonrenewable resources has been increasing and a large fraction of the exergy input gets wasted, as shown by a Grassmann diagram. Results show that opportunities exist for improving efficiency in the utilities and residential sectors. India needs to improve its efficiency at a faster rate than what happened in developed countries since otherwise the global implications due to fast economic growth and a large population can be quite significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, distributed energy systems (DESs) have been recognized as a promising option for sustainable development of future energy systems, and their application has increased rapidly with supportive policies and financial incentives. With growing concerns on global warming and depletion of fossil fuels, design optimization of DESs through economic assessments for short-run benefits only is not sufficient, while application of exergy principles can improve the efficiency in energy resource use for long-run sustainability of energy supply. The innovation of this paper is to investigate exergy in DES design to attain rational use of energy resources including renewables by considering energy qualities of supply and demand. By using low-temperature sources for low-quality thermal demand, the waste of high-quality energy can be reduced, and the overall exergy efficiency can be increased. The goal of the design optimization problem is to determine types, numbers and sizes of energy devices in DESs to reduce the total annual cost and increase the overall exergy efficiency. Based on a pre-established DES superstructure with multiple energy devices such as combined heat and power and PV, a multi-objective linear problem is formulated. In modeling of energy devices, the novelty is that the entire available size ranges and the variation of their efficiencies, capital and operation and maintenance costs with sizes are considered. The operation of energy devices is modeled based on previous work on DES operation optimization. By minimizing a weighted sum of the total annual cost and primary exergy input, the problem is solved by branch-and-cut. Numerical results show that the Pareto frontier provides good balancing solutions for planners based on economic and sustainability priorities. The total annual cost and primary exergy input of DESs with optimized configurations are reduced by 21–36% as compared with conventional energy supply systems, where grid power is used for the electricity demand, and gas-fired boilers and electric chillers fed by grid power for thermal demand. A sensitivity analysis is also carried out to analyze the influence of energy prices and energy demand variation on the optimized DES configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel multicriteria (MCDM) framework using AHP and q-ROLPBM operator is presented. • We incorporate stakeholders' degree of pessimistic and optimistic rate for all criteria. • Environmental and economic are the most crucial dimensions followed by social and technical ones. • e-fuel and e-biofuel are found to be the two top ranked production pathways. • Findings are valuable for policy/investment development for sustainable fuel production. It is widely believed that alternative low carbon fuels (ALCF) can be instrumental in achieving the transportation sector's decarbonization goal. Unlike conventional fossil-based fuels, ALCF can be produced through a combination of different chemical processes and feedstocks. The inherent complexity of the problem justifies the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach to support decision-making in the presence of multiple criteria and data uncertainty. In this paper, we propose a novel stakeholder participation-based MCDM framework integrating experts' perspectives on ALCF production pathways using the analytics hierarchy process (AHP) and the q-rung orthopair linguistic partition Bonferroni mean (q-ROLPBM) operator. The key merit of our approach lies in treating criteria of different dimensions as heterogeneous indicators while considering the mutual influence between criteria within the same dimension. The proposed framework is applied to evaluate four ALCF production pathways against 13 criteria categorised under economic, environmental, technical, and social dimensions for the case of the United Kingdom (UK). Our analysis revealed the environmental and the economic dimensions to be the most important, followed by the social and technical evaluation dimensions. The e-fuel followed by the e-biofuel are found to be the two top-ranked production pathways that utilise the electrochemical reduction process and its combination with anaerobic digestion. These findings, along with our recommendations, provide decision-makers with guidelines on ALCF production pathway selection and formulate effective policies for investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations agenda for sustainable development by the year 2030 proposes 17 sustainable development goals which include access to affordable, reliable and clean energy, sustained economic growth with full productive employment and, urgent action to mitigate environmental degradation. Planning for sustainable development requires integrating conflicting criteria on economy, energy, environment and social aspects. In this paper, we introduce a Weighted Goal Programming model involving criteria on the economic development (GDP), the electricity consumption, the greenhouse gas emissions, and the total number of employees to determine optimal labor allocation across various economic sectors. The proposed model is validated with data from the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). The results of the model aim to provide empirical evidence and insights to decision makers and policy analysts in developing optimal strategies able to simultaneously satisfy energy demand, economic growth, labor development and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to achieve sustainability targets by the year 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We evaluate the carbon intensity of human well-being of 125 countries from 1990 to 2017. • We identify the effects of urbanization on the carbon intensity of human well-being. • The two-way fixed Prais-Winston regression approach is applied to examine the grouped impacts. • Urbanization negatively affects the CIWB in countries with low urbanization countries, while contrary in highly urbanized countries. • Five cooperation organizations reinforced previous findings of different urbanization level groups. While scholars have widely discussed the relationship between urbanization, economic development and environmental degradation, little is known about how urbanization affects human well-being. This paper examines the effects of urbanization on the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB) in 125 countries in the period of 1990–2017. The CIWB is an indicator that reflects the nexus between environmental pressure and humans living standards. According to the principle of the CIWB, our results reveal that CIWB values declined over the study period, which represents an optimistic outcome in that it indicates that human well-being increased at a faster rate than increases in per capita CO 2 emissions. By employing a two-way fixed effects of Prais-Winsten regression approach, we evaluated the influence of urbanization on the CIWB in countries with various urbanization levels. Our study further selected five international cooperative organizations, each characterized by their own urbanization levels, in order to further understand whether different urbanization levels exert different impacts on the CIWB. The empirical results showed the existence of obvious differences in these effects: urbanization is shown to have prominently reduced the CIWB in countries with low and medium levels of urbanization, while it may increase the CIWB in highly urbanized countries. The empirical results obtained in relation to the cooperative organizations approximately accord with the results obtained in relation to the countries when grouped by urbanization level. The study reinforces the importance of scientific urban planning, environmental and population policies for the sustainable development of countries at different stages of urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated community energy systems (ICESs) are a modern development of local energy systems by integrating distributed energy resources and local communities. Cost allocation is one of the key issues affecting the success of ICESs. Costs should be allocated to those who cause them, and benefits to those who make the investments. A well-designed cost allocation approach will therefore contribute to a successful implementation and sustainable development of ICESs. This paper presents a general framework for designing cost allocation schemes in ICESs. Various cost allocation methods are proposed to compute the energy bills for local community members in an ICES. In addition, the cost reflectiveness of different cost allocation methods has been computed based on a case study of an ICES to gain insights into how well the costs are allocated. Next to this, the same is also done for the cost predictability to investigate how the energy costs would change in the long term. The results showed that methods with a single energy charging component perform the best in terms of the two criteria. Our assessment can facilitate local community members in selecting a method that satisfies their requirements. Overall, this research contributes to a successful implementation of cost allocation in an ICES. • A framework is designed for cost allocation in ICESs. • Various methods are proposed for cost allocation in ICESs. • Cost allocation methods are assessed by cost reflectiveness and predictability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A microwave fluidizing bed reactor was developed and reported for the first time. • High-temperature pyrolysis of polypropylene was investigated for syngas production. • An optimal syngas yield of 76.1 wt% was obtained. • The syngas was rich in H 2 (36.5 vol%), C 3 H 6 (34.8 vol%) and CH 4 (19.6 vol%). Conversion of plastic wastes into value added fuels is a good way for sustainable development. In this study, microwave-assisted fluidized bed reactor pyrolysis of polypropylene plastic for pyrolysis gas production was experimentally investigated, and the effects of pyrolysis temperature (700, 800, 900, 1000 and 1100 °C), fluidizing velocity (1.18, 2.36, 3.54, 4.72 and 5.90 × 10-3 m/s) and microwave power (600, 700, 800, 900 and 1000 W) on the pyrolysis gas products were analyzed. The results showed that when the pyrolysis temperature increased from 700 °C to 900 °C, the pyrolysis gas yield was increased from 65.2 wt% to 76.1 wt%, and then decreased to 60.7 wt% at 1100 °C. The pyrolysis gas yield was increased from 60.2 wt% to 76.1 wt% and then decreased to 42.0 wt% as the fluidizing velocity increased from 1.18 × 10-3 m/s to 5.90 × 10-3 m/s. The pyrolysis gas yield was increased from 52.2 wt% to 76.1 wt% and then decreased to 68.9 wt% as the microwave power increased from 600 W to 1000 W. An optimal pyrolysis gas yield of 76.1 wt% was obtained when the pyrolysis temperature was 900 °C, fluidizing velocity was 2.36 × 10-3 m/s and microwave power was 800 W, and the pyrolysis gas was rich in C 3 H 6 (68.6 wt%), CH 4 (15.5 wt%), and C 3 H 8 (7.1 wt%) with a higher heating value of 51.8 MJ/m3. The pyrolysis gas produced with high heating value and abundant propylene has great potentials in applications, i.e., fuel cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]