Articles

Power to the people: local energy initiatives as seedbeds of innovation?

Two decades after the launch of Local Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro, we have witnessed the emergence and development of local initiatives in sustainable development. Local energy communities are a clear manifest...

Authors: Maarten Arentsen and Sandra Bellekom

Renewable energies and their impact on local value added and employment

Beyond the motivation to reduce the environmental impact of energy production, the economic rationale is a key incentive for local communities to become involved in renewable energy (RE). Substituting imported...

Authors: Katharina Heinbach, Astrid Aretz, Bernd Hirschl, Andreas Prahl and Steven Salecki

Electricity blackouts and hybrid systems of provision: users and the ‘reflective practice’

Interest in the role of the user has provided promising insights when considering the transition towards more decentralised forms of energy provision. There is, however, a shortage of analysis on the reflexivi...

Authors: Jenny Rinkinen

Rural households’ preferences and attitudes towards biomass fuels - results from a comprehensive field survey in Bangladesh

Biomass fuel is the main source of rural household energy in many developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. This paper examines the preference and attitude towards biomass fuels of consumers living in ...

Authors: Md Kamrul Hassan, Pradipta Halder, Paavo Pelkonen and Ari Pappinen

The promotion of domestic grid-connected photovoltaic electricity production through social learning

An effective social learning process which enhances public understanding of photovoltaic installations in residential dwellings and the economic instruments used by governments to encourage investment in this ...

Authors: Greg Hampton and Simon Eckermann

The trend of natural illuminance levels in 14 Chinese cities in the past 50 years

Maximizing natural illuminance, seeking sustainable ecological development, and saving electricity are very important. The annual total natural light illuminance values of 14 typical Chinese cities in differen...

Authors: Ying He, Aiying Wang and Haijing Huang

Energy, Sustainability and Society is celebrating two years of successful open-access publication

Authors: Michael Narodoslawsky and Dagmar Fiedler

Floating layer formation, foaming, and microbial community structure change in full-scale biogas plant due to disruption of mixing and substrate overloading

The use of biogas as renewable resource of energy is of growing interest. To increase the efficiency and sustainability of anaerobic biogas reactors, process failures such as overacidification, foaming, and fl...

Authors: Tobias Lienen, Anne Kleyböcker, Manuel Brehmer, Matthias Kraume, Lucie Moeller, Kati Görsch and Hilke Würdemann

New approach for optimizing energy by adjusting the trade-off coefficient in wind turbines

As fossil fuels run out, more attention should be paid to renewable energies, among which wind energy is one of the best. Therefore, the optimization of its energetic efficiency in variable speed wind turbines...

Authors: Alireza Fakharzadeh J, Fatemeh Jamshidi and Leila Talebnezhad

Olivine: a supergreen fuel

The hydration and carbonation of olivine, the most common mineral on Earth, produce a large amount of heat. Unfortunately, the reaction is too slow for normal technological applications, but when thermally wel...

Authors: Roelof D Schuiling

Energy scenarios for the Minas Gerais State in Brazil: an integrated modeling exercise using System Dynamics

Developing medium- to long-term energy scenarios is a key to achieve goals of energy security and greenhouse gas emission reduction through the implementation of effective public policies.

Authors: Marcos Vinícius Eloy Xavier, Andrea Marcello Bassi, Cibele Mally de Souza, Wilson Pereira Barbosa Filho, Kevin Schleiss and Felipe Nunes

Development of a fuel efficient cookstove through a participatory bottom-up approach

Since 1940s, other than a few success stories, the outcomes of efforts of development and dissemination of improved cookstoves ^a have not been so fruitful. This paper presents a bottom-up approach that was succes...

Authors: Vijay H Honkalaskar, Upendra V Bhandarkar and Milind Sohoni

Biogas production from wheat straw: community structure of cellulose-degrading bacteria

Wheat straw is one of the most abundant crop residues produced in the world, making it highly interesting as a substrate for biogas production. However, due to the complex structure, its degradability and gas ...

Authors: Li Sun, Bettina Müller and Anna Schnürer

Intercontinental cross-linking of power supply - calculating an optimal power line corridor from North Africa to Central Europe

An oversupply of solar radiation in Northern Africa as well as high energy consumption in the economic centers of Central Europe give reason to an international cross-linking of regenerative power supply. A fu...

Authors: Katrin Walter and Stephan Bosch

Ballerini, D Biofuels: Meeting the Energy and Environmental Challenges of the Transportation Sector

Authors: Arne Gröngröft and Franziska Müller-Langer

The unintended consequences of greening America: an examination of how implementing green building policy may impact the dynamic between local, state, and federal regulatory systems and the possible exacerbation of class segregation

The aim of this paper is to analyze the unintended consequences of green government policies. This paper begins by providing a background on how the implementation of the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA)...

Authors: Roshan Mehdizadeh and Martin Fischer

From coal to wood thermoelectric energy production: a review and discussion of potential socio-economic impacts with implications for Northwestern Ontario, Canada

The province of Ontario in Canada is the first North American jurisdiction withlegislation in place to eliminate coal-fired thermoelectric production by theend of 2014. Ontario Power Generation (OPG) operates ...

Authors: Jason Ernest Elvin Dampier, Chander Shahi, Raynald Harvey Lemelin and Nancy Luckai

Enzymatic monitoring and control of a two-phase batch digester leaching system with integrated anaerobic filter

Biogas is one of the most promising regenerative energies. The simple fundamental principle underlying behind biomethanation is the conversion of biomass into biogas by microorganisms in four steps, whereby pr...

Authors: Carina Gasch, Ina Hildebrandt, Falk Rebbe and Isolde Röske

Acculturation of renewable energy technology into remote communities: lessons from Dobrov, Bourdieu, and Rogers and an Indonesian case study

Renewable energy technology can meet the energy needs of remote communities if local renewable energy resources are available and if it is deployed in a way that meets reasonable community expectations, thus a...

Authors: Maria Retnanestri and Hugh Outhred

Public evaluation of electricity technologies and future low-carbon portfolios in Germany and the USA

This paper aims to create insights into people's technology preferences in striving to achieve a low-carbon electricity generation system. The investigation seeks to analyze informed rather than mere opinion-b...

Authors: Dirk Scheer, Wilfried Konrad and Oliver Scheel

Envisioning the sustainability of the production of short rotation coppice on grassland

Short rotation coppices (SRC) offer a chance to enhance sustainable biomass production and to enlarge domestic wood resources. On arable land, SRC are less competitive in many regions compared to cropping syst...

Authors: Christine Rösch, Cisco Aust and Juliane Jörissen

Social sustainability in certification schemes for biofuel production: an explorative analysis against the background of land use constraints in Brazil

This article examines the scope of voluntary certification schemes, based on the sustainability criteria of the European Renewable Energy Directive for biofuel production in the context of social sustainabilit...

Authors: Anna Mohr and Linda Bausch

Review of Tackling Long-Term Global Energy Problems: The Contribution of Social Science by Daniel Spreng, Thomas Flüeler, David L. Goldblatt and Jürg Minsch (Editors)

Authors: Linda Bausch and Anna Mohr

The role of irrigation in determining the global land use impacts of biofuels

Recent studies have evaluated the land use consequences of biofuel programs and the associated carbon fluxes. However, all of these studies have effectively ignored the distinction between rainfed and irrigate...

Authors: Farzad Taheripour, Thomas W Hertel and Jing Liu

Characterization by length heterogeneity (LH)-PCR of a hydrogen-producing community obtained in dark fermentation using coastal lake sediment as an inoculum

Sustainable biohydrogen production can be achieved by dark fermentation of organic wastes, and studies were carried out using a range of substrates and inocula. The bacterial populations involved were mainly i...

Authors: Rita Di Bonito, Antonella Marone, Giulia Massini, Chiara Patriarca, Silvia Rosa, Antonella Signorini, Cristiano Varrone, Corinna Viola and Giulio Izzo

Socioeconomic impacts of wind farm development: a case study of Weatherford, Oklahoma

There have been increasing efforts nationally and internationally to promote renewable energy as a response to the awareness of the limited supply of fossil fuels, to meet growing energy demand, and to reduce ...

Authors: John Scott Greene and Mark Geisken

Book review on The Geopolitics of Energy

Authors: Michael Narodoslawsky

Biofuels, cropland expansion, and the extensive margin

Recently, several papers have assessed land use consequences of biofuel expansion. In the absence of empirical evidence, these papers assigned subjective values to extensive margin (productivity of new croplan...

Authors: Farzad Taheripour, Qianlai Zhuang, Wallace E Tyner and Xiaoliang Lu

The potential of a sustainable municipal waste management system for Santiago de Chile, including energy production from waste

Due to a rapid urbanization process in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago de Chile (MRS), the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated has increased considerably within the last years. MSW should be ma...

Authors: Tahnee González Martínez, Klaus-Rainer Bräutigam and Helmut Seifert

Community-scale assessment of rooftop-mounted solar energy potential with meteorological, atlas, and GIS data: a case study of Guelph, Ontario (Canada)

Forward-thinking governments recognize that local renewable resource use is crucial to the resilience of communities and are developing and implementing community energy plans (CEPs). Guelph, Ontario, (Canada)...

Authors: Joseph H McIntyre

Energy savings by adopting precision agriculture in rural USA

Energy input in agriculture has increased tremendously and accounts for about 17% of total energy consumed in the USA. Precision agriculture involves knowledge-based technical management systems to optimize ap...

Authors: Ganesh C Bora, John F Nowatzki and David C Roberts

Greenhouse gas emission reductions as a motivator of e85 purchases across market segments

Climate change has become a concern of both policy makers and consumers. Transportation constitutes a key source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; hence, alternative transportation fuels with reduced GHG emis...

Authors: Adrienne E Marra, Kimberly L Jensen, Christopher D Clark, Burton C English and Dustin K Toliver

Impact of the Clean Development Mechanism on wind energy investments in Turkey

As carbon trading continues to be implemented on both a national and an international scale, it is becoming an important factor in renewable energy investment decisions. Turkey, with continuous growth of carbo...

Authors: Murat Tunç and Ruhan Pak

Nonindustrial private forest owners' opinions to and awareness of energy wood market and forest-based bioenergy certification - results of a case study from Finnish Karelia

Nonindustrial private forest owners (NIPFs) in Finland are important stakeholders of forest management and roundwood supply decisions. Their role will also be significant to supply energy wood to meet Finland'...

Authors: Pradipta Halder, Timo Weckroth, Qu Mei and Paavo Pelkonen

Ecological and economic evaluation of biogas from intercrops

Biogas made from main crops (e.g., corn) is commonly used for producing electricity and heat. Nevertheless, the production of energy from monocultures is highly unsustainable and not truly renewable. Since nei...

Authors: Nora Niemetz and Karl-Heinz Kettl

Review of “Rise and fall of the carbon civilisation: resolving global environmental and resource problems” by Patrick Moriarty and Damon Honnery

Authors: Felix Witing and Daniela Thrän

A basic design for a multicriteria approach to efficient bioenergy production at regional level

In Germany, government policies supporting the growth of renewable energies lead to a rapid increase in energy crop cultivation. This increase is linked to possible conflicts between different sustainability g...

Authors: Zoë Hagen

Energy and sustainable development in Nigeria: the way forward

Access to clean modern energy services is an enormous challenge facing the African continent because energy is fundamental for socioeconomic development and poverty eradication. Today, 60% to 70% of the Nigeri...

Authors: Sunday Olayinka Oyedepo

Seawater desalination in micro grids: an integrated planning approach

Islands often depend on the import of fossil fuels for power generation. Due to the combined effect of high oil prices and transportation costs, energy supply systems based on renewable energies are already ab...

Authors: Kristina Bognar, Philipp Blechinger and Frank Behrendt

Metabolic and microbial community dynamics during the hydrolytic and acidogenic fermentation in a leach-bed process

Biogas production from lignocellulosic feedstock not competing with food production can contribute to a sustainable bioenergy system. The hydrolysis is the rate-limiting step in the anaerobic digestion of soli...

Authors: Heike Sträuber, Martina Schröder and Sabine Kleinsteuber

Comparative review of foam formation in biogas plants and ruminant bloat

This review gives an overview of the current knowledge concerning the problem of foam formation in the process of anaerobic digestion in biogas plants that utilize renewable resources or biogenic waste materia...

Authors: Lucie Moeller, Kati Goersch, Juergen Neuhaus, Andreas Zehnsdorf and Roland Arno Mueller

Third-generation feed stocks for the clean and sustainable biotechnological production of bulk chemicals: synthesis of 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid

The synthesis of 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid (2-HIB), a promising building block for, e.g., Plexiglas® production, is described as an example for a clean and sustainable bioproduction.

Authors: Denise Przybylski, Thore Rohwerder, Hauke Harms and Roland H Mueller

Renewables in residential development: an integrated GIS-based multicriteria approach for decentralized micro-renewable energy production in new settlement development: a case study of the eastern metropolitan area of Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in using micro-renewable energy sources. However, planning has not yet developed methodological approaches (1) for spatially optimizing residential develo...

Authors: Claudia Palmas, Emanuela Abis, Christina von Haaren and Andrew Lovett

Insights to the internal sphere of influence of peasant family farms in using biogas plants as part of sustainable development in rural areas of Germany

Within the last decade, the biogas branch has become an important economic sector in Germany. Many arguments are used to support a further and rapid expansion of local biogas plants in both quantity and capaci...

Authors: Anke Bischoff

Solid Biofuels for Energy

Authors: Michael Flamme

Optimisation of hybrid off-grid energy systems by linear programming

In this study, a general model of a hybrid off-grid energy system is developed, which can be adjusted to reflect real conditions in order to achieve economical and ecological optimisation of off-grid energy sy...

Authors: Fabian Huneke, Johannes Henkel, Jairo Alberto Benavides González and Georg Erdmann

Grassroots action for renewable energy: how did Ontario succeed in the implementation of a feed-in tariff system?

This article examines the policymaking process of Ontario's Green Energy Act (GEA) which enabled the introduction of the first comprehensive feed-in tariff (FIT) in North America. The FIT, which is a payback s...

Authors: Kensuke Nishimura

Decentralized electricity generation from renewable sources as a chance for local economic development: a qualitative study of two pioneer regions in Germany

Empirical research on the local economic effects associated with decentralized electricity generation from renewable sources has only just started. So far, most studies focus on quantifying economic effects an...

Authors: Britta Klagge and Tobias Brocke

Interdisciplinary research for the transformation of the energy system

Authors: Martina Schäfer

The bioliq^® bioslurry gasification process for the production of biosynfuels, organic chemicals, and energy

Biofuels may play a significant role in regard to carbon emission reduction in the transportation sector. Therefore, a thermochemical process for biomass conversion into synthetic chemicals and fuels is being ...

Authors: Nicolaus Dahmen, Edmund Henrich, Eckhard Dinjus and Friedhelm Weirich