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Behaviour, practices and culture constitute a powerful human factor in the energy system; in particular the interactions between technologies, practices and norms lock individuals in to certain patterns of (often inefficient) energy use. Consequently, behaviour change has gained traction amongst policymakers as a key area of intervention given the impact energy-related behaviours have on climate change. Given the increasing emphasis within policy perspectives in the European Union, it is surprising that a gap in understanding of the success factors of behaviour change initiatives remains. This paper addresses this gap by identifying and characterising behaviour change initiatives across five European countries (the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, and Spain). The paper provides insights into the success factors and commonly encountered barriers to behaviour change initiatives. Initiatives are classified into 6 broad categories (community-based interventions; information and awareness based interventions; eco-districts; show-case events; energy switching; and smart-technology focused interventions). The results suggest that there are significant knowledge gaps between what is known to work to engage individuals in behavioural change and what is currently being applied in practice. An over-reliance on education and awareness-raising projects is evident, illustrating that such projects do not sufficiently aim for sustained behavioural changes. A dearth of projects incorporating fiscal measures, regulations or legislation to drive behaviour change reflects reluctance on behalf of decision-makers to engage widely with diverse approaches to foster lifestyle change. This paper contributes understandings of the different models and delivery tools employed to change energy-related behaviours; insights into the critical success factors that underpin best practice and the barriers to action; and a ‘what works in practice’ overview of the meaningful approaches to change behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the asymmetric and long-run effect of energy productivity on the quality of the environment in Finland. Finland, as one of the Nordic countries, is a major contributor to the global drive to achieve decarbonization by 2050. In effect, this study seeks to contribute to the strides by querying the extent to which shocks in energy productivity make or mar the sustainability of the Finland environment from 1990:Q1 to 2019:Q4. The other impacts of financial development, economic growth, and trade openness are considered in the model estimated by using the novel hidden panel cointegration and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) methodology. The results reveal a significant asymmetric equilibrium cointegration relationship among the variables over long-run time horizons; energy productivity utilization enhances the quality of the environment in Finland over the long run while trade openness, financial development, and economic growth contribute to environmental degradation in Finland in the long term. In particular, a 1% positive and negative fluctuation in energy productivity lowers carbon emissions by 1.79442% and 0.84799% in the long term. Whereas 1% change in trade openness, financial development, and economic growth trigger CO 2 emissions (CO 2 E) by 1.15298%, 0.271365%, and 2.93402% in Finland's economies. The results of the frequency domain causality model corroborate the NARDL results. On the basis of these empirical findings, this study suggests that policymakers in Finland should consider the asymmetric behavior among these variables in setting their trade, environmental, growth, and energy policies. [Display omitted] • The effect of energy productivity on environmental degradation in Finland is examined. • Nonlinear ARDL, Fourier ADL cointegration and frequnecy domain causality tests are employed. • Energy productivity leads to lower environmental degradation in Finland. • Energy productivity causes environmental sustainability at different frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydropower is considered as one of the most convenient and popular renewable energy technologies and its capacity is growing rapidly throughout the world. Its rapid deployment also comes up with various environmental issues which cannot be neglected at a glance. Previous studies had imposed questions about its sustainable nature and now it becomes important to think about the sustainability of hydropower projects so that the technology would grow effectively in future. This paper reviews the status of research on environmental assessment of hydropower projects. The factors which affect the environmental impacts associated with hydropower generation are also explored. It is found that environmental impact assessment of hydropower projects must be performed considering all aspects and factors which affects the environmental impacts associated with hydropower projects. Most of the previous studies are focused on the estimation of GHG emissions so it is necessary to give emphasis on other environmental impacts like acidification, land use, energy consumption etc. and also consider biomass decomposition in submerged land. In fact it is not worthy to predict the sustainability of hydropower projects without considering almost all biophysical impacts associated with them. The paper also compares large and small hydro considering all sustainability assessment factors. Small hydropower projects are considered as a good alternative to control the problems associated with large hydropower projects but still many studies found that so many issues are associated with small hydro as well which cannot be neglected completely. Image 1 • Factors that influence the environmental impacts of a hydropower plant are summarized. • Current status of research related to sustainability assessment of hydropower projects is discussed. • Comparison among Large and Small Hydropower in respect of sustainability is provided. • Improvements required in the future research in order to obtain more realistic and useful results are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing energy demand and the rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions have increased the necessity of bioenergy and sustainable energy generation. The sustainable bioenergy supply chain is the key to produce sustainable biofuel. This paper points to render an optimization model for planning a versatile and dependable biomass-to-bioenergy sustainable supply chain network in which crop residuals from several agricultural sectors, multi-transportation disruption modes, multi-biorefineries, multi-biogas plants, and multi-market centers are investigated for two bioenergy sources, namely biofuel and biogas. For this reason, supply chain cost optimization, emissions of feedstock transport, processing, and distributing end biofuel to respective markets are utilized. The multi-setup-multi-delivery (MSMD) concept is incorporated and lead time crashing cost is applied to minimize the lead time in this model. The carbon emission costs at all steps and the variable production rate for the production of bioenergy are included within the model. Finally, one small-scale data and another large-scale data of six agricultural areas, four biorefineries, four biogas plants, and six markets are considered to validate the model's usefulness. The model's goal is to show bioenergy's effect to make a sustainable supply chain of biofuel and biogas. The numerical results reveal that the cost of bioenergy production contributed 54.12%, a major extent of the whole cost in biorefinery and biogas plants. The transportation segment is the preeminent initiator of carbon emissions with 83.33% in the entire carbon emission within the whole supply chain. Although, transportation cost contributed 33.09% of the total cost, the multi setup-delivery-multi-delivery policy minimized the whole supply chain cost. The results provide a systematic guideline for developing a sustainable biofuel supply-chain by minimizing cost, various aspects of transportation logistics, and multi-model alternatives under reduced energy effects. • Energy demand and two approaches of biofuel and biogas production are evaluated. • Reduction of the supply chain network's total cost. • Optimizing allocation of the appropriate quantity of residual biomass and biofuel. • Reducing energy consumption by using variable production rate. • An intelligent logistics system with multi-disruption is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy, economic and environmental performance of remanufacturing process are complex and diverse. In order to improve the comprehensive benefits, a sustainability evaluation method for multi-objective remanufacturing system synthesis based on energy, economy and environment is proposed in this paper. Starting from the remanufacturing process, the prediction model of each evaluation index is established and verified, and the technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) based on entropy weight is used for analysis and calculation. The established quantitative prediction model is of high accuracy and innovative and practical application value. The example analysis shows that this method can be successfully applied to the remanufacturing of lathe spindle, and the optimal remanufacturing scheme with comprehensive energy, economic and environmental benefits is selected. This study is not only conducive to enterprises to obtain greater comprehensive benefits of remanufacturing, but also can provide a reference for the government to formulate more perfect laws and policies. Image 10109 • Evaluation of remanufacturing sustainability considering energy, economic and environmental benefits. • The analysis and calculation models of energy consumption, cost and carbon emissions are established. • Using TOPSIS based on entropy weight to make comprehensive decision, eliminating the interference of human factors. • It is of positive significance for the development of enterprises and the formulation of government policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]