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With this volume 40 the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management can celebrate its 10 year anniversary. In this editorial we take a closer look at the journal's impact over its first 10 years of existence and highlight the articles that have made the largest impacts in the scientific community from a citation perspective. The topic of the journal - sustainable energy planning and management - has not decreased in importance over the first ten years of the journal's existence - and fortunately the results published in the journal has garnered interest and the impact of the journal has increased significantly. In terms of citations, the journal's 275 published articles, have received 1484 citations as per March 2024 and nine articles have 40 or more citations in Scopus. CiteScore ranks the journal in the top 10% out of 700+ journals within the topic of Geography, Planning and Development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This 38th volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management presents some of the newest work within the energy planning, energy systems analyses and district heating area. Articles focus on multi objective optimisation for a community in the Alps, carbon neutrality in Estonia, the prospects of heat pumps combined with thermal energy storage in maximising self-consumption from a photovoltaic field and methods for assessing district heating options. Other works focus on gamification tools for assessing energy efficiency measures, country analyses of economic and environmental indicators, the adaption of alternative fuel vehicles, and the use of waste heat sources for district heating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This 34th volume of the International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management includes papers from the 2021 conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environmental Systems (SDEWES) held October 10-15, 2021, in Dubrovnik, Croatia as well as the 7th International Conference on Smart Energy Systems held September 21-22 in Copenhagen, Denmark and two normal papers. A focus area of this issue is district heating and district cooling systems, with articles addressing resources for district heating and cooling systems, impacts of having individual district heating metres for consumers and approaches to analysing district heating systems. Another focus area is stakeholder involvement where two groups of researchers focus on stakeholders from an energy island perspective as well as from a positive energy district perspective. Both groups note the importance of factoring in stakeholders when devising transition plans. Plans for increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources for the Estonian, Latvia and Lithuanian systems are analysed using the Backbone model, finding modest increases in system costs. Lastly, an article sets up an indicator system for assessing environmental performance of European Union member states ranking, e.g., Estonian, Latvia and Lithuanian as moderate (Estonia and Latvia) to weak (Lithuania) in terms of sustainable energy performance score, based on 2019 data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue presents some of the latest findings within energy planning research and form a special issue for the 2021 5th Annual Conference of the Portuguese Association of Energy Economics as well as for the 2020 Sustainable Development of Energy, Waste and Environmental Systems conference series. The work presented probes into the effects of the European emissions' trading system on innovation, and the development of the Chinese wind power industry. Notable is also an analysis of people at Portuguese universities revealing lesser knowledge of renewable energy technologies but a more positive attitude towards this among women - and vice versa among men. EnergyPLAN-based energy systems analyses with cases from Iran and Serbia are presented, and different indicators for energy systems analyses are deliberated in a Mexican context. Marine energy developments in Columbia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Denmark are discussed with a focus on siting and barriers. Also, barriers against solar energy exploitation in Indonesia are explored as are barriers against energy savings in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many traditional heating systems which are based on fossils face challenges such as lack of investment or unfavorable price regulations, low technical performance, environmental impacts and negative consumer perceptions. The CoolHeating project which is, funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 programme and presented in this paper promotes the implementation of small modular renewable heating and cooling grids for communities in South-Eastern Europe. Core project activities bincluded measures to stimulate the interest of communities and citizens to set-up renewable district heating systems in five target communities in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia up to the investment stage. Single criteria and multi-criteria assessment approaches, considering economic, environmental and social indicators of the targeted projects, have been applied in this work in order to investigate opportunities for the sustainable transition of the heating and cooling sectors of the target communities of Southeast Europe. Both approaches confirm the feasibilities of the transition from traditional to renewable energy-based heating systems for each target community in the countries of South-Eastern Europe. After simulation and replication of the results, the sustainability analysis indicatively shows that the transitions from traditional fossil-based, poor-maintained, and difficult-to-manage heating systems towards renewable district heating and cooling systems in Southeast Europe are sustainable solutions. Having in mind the modularity of such systems, those solutions can be replicated in other Southeast European cities and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ash fusion characteristics of biomass have significant effect on slagging. In this work, the effects of ash fusion characteristics on slagging have been studied by ash fusion experiments and CFD modelling. Based on the basic ash composition of biomass, the mixture of silicon dioxide, calcium oxide, potassium oxide, and aluminum oxide have been selected as simulated ashes for ash fusion characteristics investigation. The results indicate that deformation temperature decreases with increased potassium oxide. High content of calcium oxide and silicon dioxide increase deformation temperature for the skeleton effect, respectively. The reactions of potassium oxide, calcium oxide and silicon dioxide lead to low melting products and decrease deformation temperature. Aluminum oxide increases deformation temperature by forming Si-Al-K compounds while K content is high and decreases deformation temperature while Ca or Si content is high due to the Si-Al-Ca compounds. On basis of the experimental results, an ash particle adhesion model has been developed using the corresponding characteristic temperatures of adhesion. Combined with the deposition model of inertial impaction, a CFD modelling study of ash deposition on heating surface has been performed. For a kind of cotton straw ash with low melting temperature, the modelling results indicate that adhesion of molten ash plays a major role during slagging. The accretion rate of molten ash adhesion accounts for 85% of the total accretion rate. For a kind of corn straw ash with high melting temperature, the proportion is only 37%. Compared with the actual slagging during biomass combustion, the modelling results can reflect a similar slagging situation on the surface of tube. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy policies accompanying the transition towards a sustainable development process must be supported by technical analyses in which future energy scenarios are modeled and evaluated. This paper analyzes possible decarbonization scenarios in Italy for the year 2050. They envisage high electrification of transports and residential buildings, high use of renewable energies, and a modal shift towards public transport. The energy scenarios are evaluated using a software program, EnergyPLAN, starting from a reference model developed for the year 2014. Special attention has been given to the modeling of data that are unavailable in the literature, such as the time profile of heating and cooling demands, obtained with the degree-days method and validated by elaborating the results of the modeling of the residential building stock, this latter was dynamically simulated in TRNSYS. The results show that to obtain a significant decrease of greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption, it is necessary not only to promote a deeper penetration of renewable sources, but also their integration with other technologies (cogeneration, trigeneration, power-to-heat systems, thermal storage, vehicle-to-grid operations). In fact, renewables technologies alone can raise some critical issues, such as excess and/or shortage of electricity production and non-sustainable exploitation of biomass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates current and planned investments in new power plants in Bosnia and Herzegovina and impact of these investments on the energy sector, CO2 emission, and internationally committed targets for electricity from renewable sources up to year 2020. Bosnia and Herzegovina possesses strong renewable energy potential, in particular hydro and biomass. However, the majority of energy production is conducted in outdated power plants and based on fossil fuels, resulting in environment pollution. The new major investments - Stanari Thermal plant (300 MW) and Block 7 (450 MW) at the Thermal Plant Tuzla are again focused on fossil fuels. The power sector is also highly dependent on the hydrology as 54% of current capacities are based on large hydro power. In order to investigate how the energy system of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be affected by these investments and hydrology, the EnergyPLAN model was used. Based on the foreseen demand for the year 2020, several power plants construction and hydrology scenarios have been modelled to cover a range of possibilities that may occur. This includes export orientation of Stanari plant, impact of wet, dry and average year, delayed construction of Tuzla Block 7, constrained construction of hydro power plants, and retirement of thermal units. It can be concluded that energy system can be significantly affected by delayed investments but in order to comply with renewables targets Bosnia and Herzegovina will need to explore the power production from other renewable energy sources as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Island communities require in-detail mapping of resources available for exploitation for energy purposes, since infrastructure and connections to the mainland present, in most cases, a weak point of the island energy supply. As the present energy supply on Croatian islands relies mostly on fossil fuels and electricity from the mainland, it becomes obvious that exploitation of renewable energy sources is the only solution that leads towards self-sufficiency and sustainable development. In order to design a self-sufficient and sustainable island, three major technological changes are needed: integration of renewable energy sources alongside with energy savings and improvements in energy efficiency in the energy production. Analyses for several other Croatian islands have been performed using Renewislands/ADEG methodology in order to assess all possible outcomes. The scenarios in these cases have shown that islands can become self-sufficient through combining renewable technologies and energy storage systems. Energy storage systems will be crucial for achieving desired objectives in terms of energy independence from the mainland and in general import of fossil fuels. The analysis conducted for the island of Hvar will result in creation of several scenarios which will clearly point out the favorable solutions for improvement of both security of energy supply and covering the majority of energy demand with renewable energy sources and storage technologies. Also, when talking about implementation of renewable technologies on island of Hvar, an optimal mix of technologies must be applied in order to avoid excess costs and to achieve minimal impact on environment in terms of visual pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macedonian energy sector is the main emitter of greenhouse gases with share of about 70% in the total annual emissions. Also, 70%-75% of emissions are associated with the electricity generation due to the predominant role of the lignite fuelled power plants. Recently, the government has adopted a strategy for the use of renewable energy sources (RES) which identifies a target of 21% of final energy consumption from RES by 2020. In this paper, analyses are conducted in order to investigate to which extent and in which way the absorption capacity of the power system for RES electricity can be improved. For this purpose, combining various conventional and RES technologies, including pump storage hydro power plant and revitalisation of the existing lignite power plants six scenarios for the power system expansion are developed by making use of EnergyPLAN model. Critical excess of electricity analyses are conducted in order to identify the maximal penetration of wind electricity. The results have shown that in the exiting capacities maximal penetration of wind electricity in 2020 is 13% of total electricity consumption. The revitalization of the existing lignite power plants and building of pump storage power plant would increase the wind penetration. Furthermore, the developed scenarios are comparatively assessed in terms of the associated greenhouse gases emissions and import of electricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]