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The paper discusses existing trends and prospects for decarbonization in the Commonwealth of Independent States (the CIS), an international organization that regroups Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The CIS occupies a significant share of Eurasia, representing a large share of global energy consumption and production with a corresponding carbon footprint. These countries and their decarbonization prospects are rarely discussed in the English-language scientific literature. This paper fills in this gap by offering a comprehensive analysis based on statistical data, policy documents, and scenario-based future projections. The results underline that revisiting Nationally Determined Contributions, increasing energy efficiency, and decoupling GDP growth from greenhouse gas emissions are essential to the implementation of the Paris Agreement. The future energy mix should include larger shares of renewable energy, hydrogen, fossil fuels (highly efficient with carbon capture), and nuclear energy to achieve energy security and decarbonize the economy of the region in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of smart cities, sustainability is an essential dimension. One of the ways to achieve sustainability and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in smart cities is through the promotion of sustainable energy. The demand for affordable and reliable electrical energy requires different energy sources, where the cost of production often outweighs the environmental factor. This paper aims to investigate the ways smart cities promote sustainability in the electricity sector. For this, a systematic literature review using the PRISMA protocol was employed as the methodological approach. In this review, 154 journal articles were thoroughly analyzed. The results were grouped according to the themes and categorized into energy efficiency, renewable energies, and energy and urban planning. The study findings revealed the following: (a) global academic publication landscape for smart city and energy sustainability research; (b) unbalanced publications when critically evaluating geographical continents' energy use intensity vs. smart cities' energy sustainability research outcomes; (c) there is a heavy concentration on the technology dimension of energy sustainability and efficiency, and renewables topics in the literature, but much less attention is paid to the energy and urban planning issues. The insights generated inform urban and energy authorities and provide scholars with directions for prospective research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of energy efficiency is to use less energy to provide the same service. In hospitals, energy efficiency offers a powerful and cost-effective tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, fuel consumption, and also running costs. Over a six-month period, the six gas-fired boilers that provide both a hospital's heat and hot water were monitored. Analysis of the data obtained led to several actions being implemented in the hospital boiler room control system to improve the efficiency of the heat production system. Comparative studies were conducted, during similar weather periods, of the performance of the hospital's hot water production system before and after the controls were implemented. Results indicate that the control actions applied proved to be effective. Finally; the paper offers a financial; primary energy saving and CO2 reduction analysis that points to a 3,434.00 €/week savings in natural gas consumption; and a cut in CO2 emissions of 20.3 tons/week; as compared to the reference facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since energy efficiency and energy improvement are viewed as two of the most important keys of sustainable management, research on energy has become popular and captured much more attention. The current paper aimed to measure the energy efficiency of 25 countries with carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as well as their energy efficiency improvement. First, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) slack-based model (SBM) was employed to obtain efficiency scores. Second, the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) was then used to examine the improvement during the period of 2010–2017. Findings of this study showed that developed countries had a more balanced development between gross domestic product (GDP) growth and CO2 emissions by using the same inputs as developing countries. Additionally, the findings revealed that India and China, being the two largest population countries, achieved improved energy intensity during 2010–2017; however; their energy consumption and CO2 emissions continued to grow, leading them to being the two worst countries in terms of energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]