Search

The European Union launched a set of policies as part of its 2020 climate and energy package aimed at meeting its 20/20/20 headline targets for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. This paper evaluates how successful new-to-the-market climate change mitigation technologies (CCMT) are in helping EU member states (MS) reach these goals and, furthermore, whether there are differences between sectors subject to EU-wide polices. To do so, we relate CCMT patent counts to two specific headline targets: (1) achieving 20% of gross final energy consumption from renewables, and (2) achieving a 20% increase in energy efficiency. Our results provide the first ex-post evaluation of the effectiveness of these technologies for combating climate change. Moreover, our sectoral impact assessment points to significant differences in the way in which these technologies contribute to policy goals across the sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Smart grid technologies are an important dimension of electricity system change and governments have been actively involved in their diffusion in a number of jurisdictions. Deployment rates for technologies involving the public have varied, despite governments pursuing similar policies/programs and implementing comparable technologies, such as smart meters. An important question is why. Examining smart grids in the media can be helpful in understanding these differences. Media coverage represents a means through which to gauge how issues are being framed, which can in turn influence public perceptions of these technologies. We examine media coverage of smart grids in national-level Canadian newspapers over time to explore how often and what aspects of smart grids are emphasized within this context. We found that while initially more positive aspects of smart grids were highlighted, over time media coverage of smart grid technologies and deployment programs became more negative. This suggests that people's perceptions of technologies are likely entwined with the processes in which people become exposed to them – negative experiences with the implementation programs often correlated to negative perceptions of technologies. We also found that negative technology and program attributes were more pronounced in certain regions of Canada versus others despite embarking upon similar policies and programs aimed at advancing smart grids (introducing smart meters). In addition, the specific risks and benefits differed, depending on the sub-national geographic setting. Thus, in designing and executing policies, decision makers ought to be cognizant of issue framing and which ones will resonate more within their local context. As smart grid proponents seek to introduce a further array of technologies into societies, we suggest that they concurrently carefully consider the channels in which people become exposed to and experience these technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important policy reforms for the European Union (EU) agriculture was the implementation of the Agenda 2000, which establishes a new framework for subsidies management, decoupled from both crop and animal production for the vast majority of products. One of the main goals of this new policy framework is the improvement of its environmental impact. Additionally, there is a need for the implementation of new efficiency assessment and prognostication tools for the evaluation of EU farming, because the influence of market forces has been increased substantially. Having in mind the efficacy of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology, it is used to calculate and quantify the environmental efficiency of EU countries' primary sectors. In this paper, the DEA Window methodology is used to assess GHG emissions efficiency and identify efficiency change of EU countries' primary sectors, under the strong influence of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), quantifying by this way its positive or negative impact on a national basis, providing at the same time hints for counteractive actions. The main results provide the significant differences among EU countries, with the less developed ones to perform low environmental efficiency rates. Moreover, countries which their output depends to a large extend on arable crops achieve low efficiency rates too. Finally, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are being used as a tool to estimate future performance of EU countries primary sectors on the topic of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions as an undesirable output of agricultural production process. The validation performance characteristics, as well as the linear fit to this output-target relationship, closely intersect the bottom-left and top-right corners of the plot. The combination of these methodologies provides a new methodological approach for CAP evaluation and prognostication, appropriately adjusted to the new market oriented framework for EU agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Today''s environmental policies are largely devoted to fostering the development and implementation in Europe of renewable energy technologies, such as grid-connected photovoltaic solar energy, which are being actively promoted by European Union countries. This article describes an environmental decision-support system (EDSS) for selecting optimal sites for grid-connected photovoltaic power plants. This system combines multicriteria analysis and the analytic hierarchy process with geographical information systems (GIS) technology and at the same time takes into account environment, orography, location, and climate factors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]