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In recent years, the Chinese Central Government has put great emphasis on the marine economy, since it has been a new driving force of the national economic development. Yet, the relationship between marine economic development and energy efficiency remains unknown. In this paper, we investigate whether marine economic development affected energy efficiency. We focused on the Zhoushan Archipelago, the first National New Area for marine economic development in China. We applied panel data approach to construct the counterfactual of Zhoushan Archipelago. We compared Zhoushan and its counterfactual, the synthetic Zhoushan, and viewed the difference between them, after the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area, as the impact of marine economic development on energy efficiency. We found that compared with its counterfactual, the real Zhoushan had a more substantial improvement in energy efficiency after the National New Area construction. We estimated that the construction of the National New Area for Marine Economy increased energy efficiency by about 10 percentage points. We also applied the bootstrapping technique to illustrate the significance of the estimated results. The results suggest that the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area construction had a statistically significant impact on energy efficiency. In addition, we conducted two tests, including leave-one-out tests and permutation tests, to check the robustness of estimated results, which also serve as an illustration of significance of the estimated results from an alternative empirical perspective. The results from these two tests are similar to each other, both indicating that the Zhoushan Archipelago New Area construction had a statistically significant positive impact on energy efficiency. Overall, our results suggest that marine economic development had a sizable improvement in energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The rapid development of China's economy cannot be separated from the massive consumption of fossil fuel. However, potential risks such as the extreme shortage of fossil fuel and the resulting environmental problems are becoming more and more prominent. As a substitution for fossil fuel, renewable energy is playing an increasingly important role in the energy structure adjustment. As a special type of renewable energy, marine renewable energy has been paid much attention by China's government and scientific researchers because of its properties such as cleanness, environmental protection and large reserves. Under the background of energy structure adjustment and electricity market reform in China, the marine renewable energy power market has a bright future. Through querying an amount of literature and information, this paper makes a strategic analysis based on the understanding of the resource endowment, the current industrial status, and policy environment. Then, the PEST‐SWOT strategy analysis model was adopted to analyze the internalities (strengths and weaknesses) and the externalities (opportunities and threats) of the factors affecting the development of marine renewable energy power industry. Then, some countermeasures from the four angles of strategic positioning, institutional arrangement, environmental education, and technical support are proposed to address the weaknesses and threats. Through the research, some conclusions and policy proposals are finally put forward to promote the sustainable development of the industry. In this paper, current situation of China's marine renewable energy reserves is investigated. The PEST‐SWOT strategy analysis model is adopted to analyze the internalities (strengths and weaknesses) and the externalities (opportunities and threats) of the factors affecting the development of marine energy power industry. And the corresponding countermeasures and policy suggestions on promoting the sustainable development of the industry are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy conversion and utilization are continuous but ever increasing processes for sustainability and economic development. Environmental concerns, such as thermal and air pollution, have dictated the practices of energy conservation and recovery, as well as the implementation of clean energy sources. Heat exchangers are an important component for processes where energy conservation is achieved through enhanced heat transfer. Such issues as increased energy demands, space limitations, and materials savings have highlighted the necessity for miniaturized light-weight heat exchangers, which provide high heat transfer for a given heat duty. However, while traditional heat exchangers employ conventional tubes (⩾6 mm) with various cross-sections, orientations, and even the enhanced surface textures, the technology is nearing its limits. Microchannels (broadly ⩽1 mm) represent the next step in heat exchanger development. They are a particular target of research due to their higher heat transfer and reduced weight as well as their space, energy, and materials savings potential over regular tube counterparts. In contrast to traditional tube heat exchangers, the heat transfer and fluid flow correlations, and the systematic design procedures are not yet well established for microchannels. It remains to be established whether the classical fluid flow and heat transfer theories and correlations are valid for microchannels. Numerous investigations are underway with researchers consolidating evidence on both sides of this question. This paper surveys the published literature on the status and potential of microchannels, and it identifies research needs, and defines the scope for long-term research. Based on results from the review, an air-to-liquid crossflow experimental infrastructure has been developed and commissioned. It will be used to investigate the heat transfer and fluid flow for a variety of working fluids in different microchannel test specimens. Further information and the heat balance status of the developed test facility are also presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an editorial on the significance of green energy systems. According to the author, green energy is viewed as an indispensable element for energy security, sustainable development and social, technological, industrial, and governmental innovations in a country. He opines that an increase in the green energy consumption of a country often gives a positive impact on economic growth and social development.

This study determines the factors responsible for the growth of transport sector CO2 emissions in 20 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries during the 1980–2005 period by decomposing the emissions growth into components associated with changes in fuel mix (FM), modal shift and economic growth, as well as changes in emission coefficients (EC) and transportation energy intensity (EI). The key finding of the study is that economic growth and the changes in transportation EI are the principal factors driving transport sector CO2 emission growth in the countries considered. While economic growth is responsible for the increasing trend of transport sector CO2 emissions in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, the transportation EI effect is driving CO2 emissions in Bolivia, the Caribbean, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Other Latin America, Panama and Paraguay. Both economic activity (EA) and EI effects are found responsible for transport sector CO2 emissions growth in the rest of the Latin American countries. In order to limit CO2 emissions from the transportation sector in LAC countries, decoupling of the growth of CO2 emissions from economic growth is necessary; this can be done through policy instruments to promote fuel switching, modal shifting and reductions in transport sector EI. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]