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This paper presents the editorial for the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews joint special issue devoted to the research work discussed and presented at the 11th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES), held from the 4th September to the 9th September 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal and the 2nd South East European (SEE) SDEWES Conference held from June 15th to June 18th, 2016 in Piran, Slovenia. This special issue is in line with the journal's aim of publishing research from across the ever-broadening field of renewable and sustainable energy with a strong review element. Previous SDEWES conference special issues have gathered a significant knowledge base in the field of sustainable development that reflects the continuous research efforts of the SDEWES research community. Therefore, this editorial provides not only an overview of the papers published in this particular special issue, but also a wider overview of the current trends in the domain of sustainable and renewable energy. This year's special issue focuses particularly on the benefits of the bio-based economy, energy security issues, fossil fuel thermal plant alternatives and environmental constraints, district heating and cooling together with cross sector energy efficiency and energy conservation issues. Sustainable transport systems, the issue of fuel poverty in urban neighbourhoods and renewable energy to support development of peripheral rural areas, optimising passive building design for hot climates and solar-powered heating and cooling are further topics featured in this special issue. In the process of selecting papers for this special issue, the guest editors invited in total 23 extended manuscripts for consideration for publication. After a rigorous review process by expert reviewers overseen by the guest editors a total of 16 articles were accepted for publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy storage (ES) is an important device to ensure operation stability and efficiency of a renewable energy based distributed energy generation (DEG) system. As such, many researchers have modelled the operation (scheduling) of energy storage in a DEG system, where it is mostly portrayed to operate on a daily cycle. In this paper, an analysis of the operation mode of energy storage is presented. Two modes of operation are defined, daily mode (DM) (ES operates in daily cycles) and weekly mode (WM) (ES operates in weekly cycles) which are modelled accordingly. This paper then attempts to analyse and compare between both modes in term of operation and cost. The analysis is performed through a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model programmed via the General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS). In general, with high capital cost of ES, it is advisable to program the ES to operate in a DM. The reason to this conclusion is mainly due to three factors, intermittency of renewable resources, varying weather conditions, and discharge rate of ES(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has assumed objectives for energy sustainability and the fight against climate change. In this regard, the generation of biogas allows contributions to the 2020 established targets. The EU is leader in the production of biogas, representing 60% of total global production in 2011. The estimates of the contribution of biogas to electricity generation for 2020 in the EU-28 represent 1.5% within the total energy mix. This paper analyzes the measures implemented in the EU-28 to promote biogas, relating them to the country targets established in their National Renewable Energy Action Plans. Currently, 19 countries apply some measure of price and/or amount: 14 use Feed-in Tariffs, 6 Premium Tariffs and 1 uses tenders. A trend has been observed to reduce public financial support to promote biogas, linked to the reduction of the cost of this technology, and to the attempt to increasingly link it to the markets. However, excessive linking to the market hinders its development, putting the attainment of 2020 targets at risk. Consequently, the Feed-in Tariff or Premium Tariff systems, used in each country, must be designed in agreement with the peculiarities of the development of their markets, to be able to guarantee suitable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (RSER) is a virtual special issue (VSI) dedicated to the three conferences on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems (SDEWES) held in 2018. These included the 13th SDEWES Conference (30 September to the 4 October in Palermo, Italy), the 3rd South East European SDEWES Conference (30 June to 4 July in Novi Sad, Serbia and the 1st Latin American SDEWES Conference (28–31 January in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). In line with the RSER's policy, this VSI published two types of articles, either high quality review papers or original research papers with a strong review component. The guest editors invited 55 extended articles presented at the 2018 SDEWES conferences. These articles went through rigorous peer review process, and a total of 17 articles were finally accepted and published in this VSI. This editorial overviews these articles and examines their contribution to the field. In addition this editorial also provides an overview of the SDEWES 2018 conference series in order to reflect the continuous research efforts of the SDEWES research community and knowledge body on topics such as sustainable mobility, energy storage systems, various sustainability assessments, renewable energy source (RES) potential and biorefineries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]