There exist overwhelming – and morally compelling – reasons for shifting to renewable energy (RE), because only that will enable us to timely mitigate dangerous global warming. In addition, several other morally weighty reasons speak in favor of the shift: considerable public health benefits, broader environmental benefits, the potential for sustainable and equitable economic development and equitable energy access, and, finally, long-term energy security. Furthermore, it appears that the transition to RE is economically, technologically, and politically (...) feasible at this point in time. However, there are different possible pathways towards that goal, all of which involve tough choices. Some of these concern different ways of living: Do we have to make a choice between being sustainable and maintaining our current living standard? And if so, how can we balance the value of high living standards against that of a sustainable energy regime? In this chapter, I will not conduct a comprehensive analysis of all available renewable energy technologies, but rather provide a number of examples of tough choices entailed by solar, wind and hydropower. I will also attempt to rebut some of the common misconceptions regarding RE technologies. (shrink)

We all know that renewable energies are important for environmental reasons. However, recent developments should open our eyes to the fact that they are even more critical for sustainable development. In this commentary, we argue that societal benefits should be included in renewable energy decisions. Specifically, we discuss their contributions to freedom, peace, and democracy.

This article establishes the benefits of applying renewable energy and analyzes the main difficulties that have stood in the way of more widely successful renewable energy for rural areas in the developing world and discusses why outcomes from these technologies fall short. Although there is substantial recognition of technological, economic, institutional, and other supply-side barriers that have generally interfered with success, the household and other stake-holders have been left outside the scope of evaluation. This article first (...) discusses the usefulness of renewable energy for encouraging sustainability in rural, poor areas, analyzes barriers that have often interfered with the promotion and delivery of expected outputs of installed modern energy technology in remote communities, and finally presents findings from a survey on the actual performance state of the renewable energy technology and degree of satisfaction with it. (shrink)

Africa's renewable energy resource base is large. Traditional patterns of energy use have resulted in widespread environmental degradation. Renewable energy technologies are capable of harnessing this energy on a sustainable basis. However, despite some notable successes, efforts to disseminate these tech nologies have resulted in numerous failures. The failure of such efforts has been attributed to a variety of problems which have yet to be evaluated in a comprehensive and policy-relevant form. Such analysis is (...) prerequisite to enabling policy-makers to act effectively. (shrink)

Rural electrification is now and will remain an essential element for rural development in China and other developing countries. With more than half of the world’s population living in rural communities, lessons for rural renewable energy applications and assessment from China can be very helpful in defining a global sustainable development strategy. This paper describes energy needs in rural China, examines the resource availability of three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang in Western China), and evaluates rural (...) energy options and the economics of stand-alone off-grid renewable energy technologies for rural application in this region. An eight-year collaborative effort between several of China’s leading energy and environmental research institutes and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy demonstrates the existence of a viable renewable energy-based strategy to address rural electricity needs in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner. (shrink)

A 450-ppm equivalent CO2 target by 2050 is an often-proposed goal under a future global emissions agreement, but there is considerable high side risk in global-warming models due to cloud formation, feedbacks in dissolved organic carbon from peat bogs in polar regions, and unaccounted solar dimming by particulates. The 450-ppm figure is predicated on absorption of some CO2 by oceans, but increasing acidification may dictate that CO2 produced during the next 50 years may have to be reduced further to preserve (...) species diversity in the oceans. By consideration of industry capability, a 400-ppm target is shown to be affordable and achievable by renewables using 2/3 direct solar electricity by 2050 with technology currently being proven, together with aggressive energy efficiency. Sequestration of liquid CO2 under pressure in enormous continually excavated caverns at 2-km depth is technically much less certain and later in development. (shrink)

This book brings together the latest technological research in computational intelligence and fuzzy logic as a way to care for our environment, highlighting current advances and future trends in environmental sustainability using the principles of soft computing.

The large-scale and inevitable shift away from the fossil- and nuclear-powered economic model will have dramatic consequences. The author discusses these by looking at the impacts on and of one of the greatest accomplishments of 20th-century culture: global urbanization, modern cities, and urban life. Technological implications, urban form impacts, policy dimensions, institutional ramifications, and cultural issues all form the very nexus of challenges confronting decision makers worldwide at local, regional, and global levels.

Analyzing the transformation of climate activism in a rapidly changing political landscape, this book traces everyday renewable energy actions within a growing 'epistemic community', dispersed across organizational boundaries and domains. It will be of interest to social science scholars of business, renewable energy and sustainability transitions.

The COVID-19 pandemic-induced worldwide contingency has significantly disrupted the way education has been delivered, going through a crucial period of change and adaptation. But how does this dynamic impact both students’ and teachers’ educational process? This research on the teaching of renewable energies at the higher education level in engineering programs reveals the main challenges to this transformation as well as how they were overcome. The methodology is qualitative with two-way dynamic reflection, between the facts and their interpretation, and (...) impacts 130 engineering students, from all of Colombia’s regions. Among the main results, six challenges stand out, which were addressed through different strategies. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to address the regulatory framework as one of the key factors determining the success of creation of single market for renewable energy. No one could possibly argue that non-discriminative and consistent legal regulation plays a big role in the creation of a single market. Therefore, the question of legal capability to create the single market for renewable energy and the overall quality of present regulatory framework is at the centre of (...) this article. Our objective is to analyse whether the single market for energy produced from renewable sources can be created under current legal regulation of the European Union Therefore, the first part of the article analyses the competence of the European Union to regulate the renewable energy sector and division of legislative powers between the Member States and the European Union. The goal of the first part is to answer the question whether the European Union has the competence to regulate renewable energy market. The second part of the article analyses the legal framework of measures for the promotion of renewable energy production used in each Member State. The goal of the second part of this article is to answer the question – whether all renewable energy producers are in equal competitive position, notwithstanding different legal frameworks of the Member States. (shrink)

Renewable energy technology is often seen as a positive expression of technology, meeting energy needs with minimal environmental impact. But, by integrating nature with the ordering of the electric grid, renewables silently convert that nature into what Martin Heidegger referred to as standing reserve—resources of the technological commodity chain to be ordered, controlled, converted, and consumed on demand. However, it may be possible to mitigate the downsides of this process through a transition to more decentralized, local sources (...) of renewable energy operations and management that maintain awareness of the ways in which energy is generated and distributed. (shrink)

Hybrid renewable energy system arises regularly in real life. By optimizing the capacity and running status of the microgrid, HRES can decrease the running cost and improve the efficiency. Such an optimization problem is generally a constrained mixed-integer programming problem, which is usually solved by linear programming method. However, as more and more devices are added into MG, the mathematical model of HRES refers to nonlinear, in which the traditional method is incapable to solve. To address this issue, (...) we first proposed the mathematical model of an HRES. Then, a coevolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithm, termed CMOEA-c, is proposed to handle the nonlinear part and the constraints. By considering the constraints and the objective values simultaneously, CMOEA-c can easily jump out of the local optimal solution and obtain satisfactory results. Experimental results show that, compared to other state-of-the-art methods, the proposed algorithm is competitive in solving HRES problems. (shrink)

This article is focused on analysing the present state of renewable electricity production and consumption coverage in Germany, concentrating on the intermittence of wind and solar energy production and considering the significance of the wind silence phenomenon. The development and promotion of renewable energy is a major goal set out by politicians of which one example is the German plan “Energiewende”. The author examines wind and solar energy complementarity and attempts assessing the possibility of basing (...) Germanys’ electricity production on renewable energy sources, without significant advancements in technology and changes in consumer behaviour. Using the analysis based on hourly data of consumption and production by source of electricity in Germany in 2016, the research addresses the issues of renewable energy source effectiveness, intermittence and points to the critical matter of periodical unavailability of wind and solar energy. (shrink)

Significant challenges confronting China include reducing carbon emissions, dealing with the resulting problems, and meeting various requirements for long-term economic growth. As a result, the shift in industrial structure best reflects how human society utilizes resources and impacts the environment. To meet China's 2050 net-zero emissions target, we look at how technological innovations, financial development, renewable energy investment, population age, and the economic complexity index all play a role in environmental sustainability in China. Analyzing short- and long-term relationships (...) using ARDL bounds testing, we used historical data spanning 1990–2018. According to the study's findings, the cointegration between CO2 emissions and their underlying factors was found. The deterioration of the environment directly results from financial development, increasing economic complexity, and population aging. Technical advancements, investments in renewable energy sources, and changes to the industrial structure all contribute to lower CO2 emissions. Granger causality results were also reliably obtained in this study. According to our findings in the fight against environmental problems, a key tool for meeting long-term sustainability goals is policy prescriptions that use technological innovations, renewable energy investment, and industrial structure. (shrink)

In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred, and this had a strong effect on public perceptions of energy facilities and services that relate not only to nuclear energy, but also renewable energy resources. Moreover, the accident has also considerably affected national energy plans in both developing and developed countries. In South Korea, several studies have been conducted since the accident to investigate public perspectives toward particular energy technologies; however, few studies have investigated public perceptions (...) of renewable-energy technologies and tracked the transitions. Therefore, this study examines the trend of South Korean public’s perceptions of renewable-energy technologies. Based on data collected in 2016, we validated the structural connections and determined that trust, benefits, risks, and attitude were key determinants of the public’s desire to adopt these technologies; specifically, public attitude was found to be the greatest determinant of this desire. Based on the results, both implications and limitations are examined. (shrink)

Global climate change is one of the biggest threats humankind faces today. Changing climatic conditions are expected to lead to rising sea levels, a higher frequency of natural hazards, extended phases of drought, and a greater risk of many other sudden and slow-onset events. These threats will impact not only economic development but also the livelihood and cultures of many communities and regions of the world. Governing climate change to minimize these risks not only concerns understanding its science but also (...) analyzing policy options with methods from social sciences and economics. This in turn means making evaluative judgments about what policy measures can be considered just and fair. These kinds of judgments are normative; they concern ethics. The aim of this article is to lay out some of the most important aspects of justice and responsibility in governing transitions to renewable energy as a means of reducing global emissions. (shrink)

Abstract:As the use of renewable energy becomes more popular in the twenty-first century, this will cause questions to be asked, such as who owns renewable energy? This question has not yet been asked in a formalized academic setting with a view to philosophically justifying ownership. However, after reviewing ownership types from a variety of schools of thought, it was found that an ownership type based around the work of John Locke, would be the most suitable. In (...) particular, the Lockean-inspired model would have many benefits including: fulfilling human rights, satisfying group rights, and encouraging the domestic harnessing of renewable energy. It benefits from the fact that renewable energy is both widespread and abundant, and also from the fact that the harnessing equipment is now becoming more affordable and available. Moreover, the Lockean-inspired work could forge an ethos aiding its practical introduction, possibly via legislation if needed. (shrink)

The government of Ontario has adopted wind energy development as an alternative energy source. It enacted the Green Energy and Economy Act, May 2009, with the intention to fast track the approval process regarding industrial wind turbines. The Act legislated a centralized decision making process while removing local jurisdictional authority. Throughout this process, the government reassured the public of inexpensive and reliable electricity. This article explores the costs and benefits related to the renewable energy policy (...) established in Ontario, Canada. (shrink)

What Will Work makes a rigorous and compelling case that energy efficiencies and renewable energy-and not nuclear fission or "clean coal"-are the most effective, cheapest, and equitable solutions to the pressing problem of climate change.

Local opposition to infrastructure projects implementing renewable energy (RE) such as wind farms is often strong even if state-wide support for RE is strikingly high. The slogan “Not In My BackYard” (NIMBY) has become synonymous for this kind of protest. This paper revisits the question of what is wrong with NIMBYs about RE projects and how to best address them. I will argue that local opponents to wind farm (and other RE) developments do not necessarily fail to contribute (...) their fair share to producing a desirable public good (clean energy). In fact, with landscape concerns being at the heart of much protest, the question of fair burden distribution becomes sidelined: landscape impacts cannot be distributed nor compensated for. Protests may be attempts to express a true conflict of (incommensurable) values. Understanding them as such will help us better address NIMBY concerns and overcome such opposition through ensuring procedural justice. (shrink)

One might think that nuclear energy is a simple issue, with economists loving it and environmentalists hating it. But climate change complicates matters. Global warming reveals fossil fuels as the real problem. For reining in climate change, it would make sense to use any and all solutions that work; and nuclear power might presumably serve as a stopgap measure until the global economy can run on renewables alone. However, decades of tinkering with fission have not led to engineering breakthroughs. (...) Fast breeder technology could not get off the ground, nuclear reprocessing turned out to be a dead end, safe underground storage facilities were never located, and what to do with nuclear waste continues to be an open question. Major accidents, as in Fukushima 2011, can happen. Insurance companies still demand liability protection when underwriting fission. And running nuclear reactors over time indicates that their economic competitiveness is not impressive. So climate change, engineering d .. (shrink)

We reviewed the output of research and innovation cooperation between Russia and the US, including publications and patents, in the four prospective areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy during 2007-2011. Joint US-Russia research groups appear to focus primarily on hydrogen energy (fuel cells), followed by solar photovoltaics. The upcoming areas of smart grid and biofuels were left out entirely both from research and innovation collaboration. Russian patents in green energy technologies registered in the US (...) are very low in comparison to those from Japan, Korea, and China. (shrink)

Renewable energy has gained much-deserved prominence on the world stage of sustainable development, yet despite the surging interest there is a notable lack of understanding regarding best practices in business – stakeholder relations. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2005) and drawing from complexity theory and social scientific theories of identity, our empirical study shows that core values and identity are strongly implicated in the formation and negotiation of stakeholder attitudes for both individuals and social groups. Specifically, (...) we find that personal and social identity are core drivers of community attitude development in a complex adaptive system, and that conflicts between strongly held identities are galvanized along bifurcated “axes of tension” that are also strongly implicated in community attitude formation processes. (shrink)

This article explores impact investing within the renewable energy sector. Drawing on ethical decision making and sensemaking, this article contributes to an enhanced understanding of the complex ethical sensemaking process of impact investors when facing plausible situations in a world of contested truths. Addressing the ethical tensions faced by impact investors with mixed motives, this study investigates the way decision makers use context-specific reasons to make sense of and shape the renewable energy investment process. This represents (...) an initial attempt to understand ethical sensemaking in impact investing made within the renewable energy sector using a multi-stakeholder approach. Our findings show that prosocial, personal, reputational, and economic motives are the main drivers of REI, with prosocial and personal motives being value-based, and reputational and economic motives being evidence-based. We find three different modes of ethical sensemaking, allowing for the construction of the four motives noted above. These motives are based on the context-specific reasons of impact investing decision makers in the RE sector. This article contributes to the academic discourse on ethical sensemaking with some key processes involved in ethical decision making, and a better understanding of the underlying motivations of impact investing in the RE sector. (shrink)

Climate justice activists envision a “postcarbon” future that not only transforms energy infrastructures but also redresses the fossil fuel economy’s long-standing racial inequalities. Yet this anti-racist rebranding of the “zero emissions” telos does not tend to the racial grief that’s foundational to white supremacy. Accordingly, I ask: can we address racial oppression through a “just transition” to a “postcarbon” moment? In response, I connect today’s postcarbon imaginary with yesterday’s postcolonial imaginary. Drawing from research on US-based climate activism, I explore (...) how the utopic rhetoric of a “just transition” is instantiated in practice. I argue that the racialized absences constitutive of what scholars call “postcolonial amnesia” are operative in the anti-racist move to a postcarbon moment. This postcarbon imaginary formulates the vulnerability of people of color to biophysical disasters as the raison d’être for infrastructural transformation. This, I argue, has the effect of overlooking the ways in which racial grief inheres in such vulnerability and the capacity of energy infrastructures to uphold racist hierarchies. I situate this “postcarbon amnesia” in Anne Cheng’s framework for differentiating “grief” from “grievance,” calling for renewable energy transitions that move away from enumerative grievances and toward a sobering recognition of racial grief. (shrink)

In association with the development of intermittent renewable energy generation, dynamic multiobjective dispatch faces more challenges for power system operation due to significant REG uncertainty. To tackle the problems, a day-ahead, optimal dispatch problem incorporating energy storage is formulated and solved based on a robust multiobjective optimization method. In the proposed model, dynamic multistage ES and generator dispatch patterns are optimized to reduce the cost and emissions. Specifically, strong constraints of the charging/discharging behaviors of the ES in (...) the space-time domain are considered to prolong its lifetime. Additionally, an adaptive robust model based on minimax multiobjective optimization is formulated to find optimal dispatch solutions adapted to uncertain REG changes. Moreover, an effective optimization algorithm, namely, the hybrid multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization and Teaching Learning Based Optimization, is employed to seek an optimal Pareto front of the proposed dispatch model. This approach has been tested on power system integrated with wind power and ES. Numerical results reveal that the robust multiobjective dispatch model successfully meets the demands of obtaining solutions when wind power uncertainty is considered. Meanwhile, the comparison results demonstrate the competitive performance of the PSO-TLBO method in solving the proposed dispatch problems. (shrink)

The production of renewable energy in agricultural biogas plants is being widely criticized because—among other things—most of the feedstock comes from purpose-grown crops like maize. These activities generate competitive pressure to other crops that are used for feeding or food production, worsening their affordability. Unique pretreatment technology that allows substitution of the purpose-grown crops by farming residues was built 6 years ago on a commercial basis in Pěčín under modest funding and without publicity. The design of the concept; (...) financial assessment and moral viewpoint were analyzed based on practical operating data. It showed that the apparatus improves economic, environmental and moral acceptance as well. However, according to the government’s view, public funding for this type of processing was shortened, “because waste materials represent a lower cost”. The impact of such governance was analyzed as well. (shrink)

Contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy utilization. As federal and state incentives for investments in RE technologies become more prevalent, RE sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy. RE utilization is recognized as a key component of “green” product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption. Yet, despite consistent evidence (...) that corporate sustainability initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance, the limited research that examines associations between RE initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established. Drawing on the natural resource-based view of the firm, we examine the association between RE utilization and firm financial performance over time. Annual ROI, Tobin’s Q, and operating margin for large U.S. firms identified as exceptional users of RE in the EPA’s Fortune 500 Top Green Power Partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7-year period and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings. Our research advances current knowledge about the influence of RE utilization by demonstrating that top RE user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors. As such, the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of RE utilization. (shrink)

Many applications of intuitionistic fuzzy sets depend on ranking or comparing intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. This paper presents a novel ranking method for intuitionistic fuzzy numbers based on the preference attitudinal accuracy and score functions. The proposed ranking method considers not only the preference attitude of decision maker, but also all the possible values in feasible domain. Some desirable properties of preference attitudinal accuracy and score functions are verified in detail. A total order on the set of intuitionistic fuzzy numbers is (...) established by using the proposed two functions. The proposed ranking method is also applied to select renewable energy. The advantage and validity of the proposed method are shown by comparing with some representative ranking methods. (shrink)

Concerns about energy security have dramatically increased since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. If U.S. energy use follows business-as-usual projections, the energy system will become increasingly vulnerable. No quick fixes are available to make the United States energy independent. However, there are energy policies that promote efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources such as wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar can gradually reduce dependence on imported oil and natural gas and (...) reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. energy infrastructure to disruption of supplies or to attack. This article reviews recent analyses by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s and by the Union of Concerned Scientists. These studies showthat efficiency and renewable energy investments can increase energy security while lowering consumer energy bills and reducing local and global environmental hazards. (shrink)

The European Union’s funding of electricity made of biogas that is obtained from purpose-grown plants accelerated the global boom of renewable energy two decades ago. Tens of thousands of biogas plants were built in EU farms soon after. As this specific trend toward renewable energy globally spreads, it has the potential to alter the features of agriculture in the future. Such conceptual changes are related to a variety of socio-economic and environmental implications that manifest itself over (...) a large time scale. Regarding renewables made of purpose-grown plants, a majority of reservations are related to its production economy, particularly since these biofuels are expected to compete with food or feed. So far, little attention has been paid to the fact that the fields of farms that run biogas stations are subject to shortly repeated erosive crops followed by the intensive application of the fermentation residues obtained. The various types of soil on different European farms, which have been operating biogas stations for at least two decades, were analyzed. It was revealed for the first time that such practices cause soil degradation and pose a threat to food production, which has been overlooked until now. The relations between ethical and economical points of view are discussed. (shrink)

Greenhouse gas emissions are adversely affecting the earth’s climate, a global common and a public good. The contribution of individual countries has a limited effect on the biosphere, implying that only globally coordinated efforts may result in significant climate improvements. The Rio Earth Summit (1992) and Kyoto Protocol (1997) are manifestations of international efforts to achieve sustainable development through efficient use of energy and incorporating more renewable sources in global economy. In this article, the author examines the (...) class='Hi'>energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases and the utilization of renewable energy sources in Canada with respect to Agenda 21 commitments. An overview of the results of Canada’s policies on climate change since Rio in terms of energy consumption, various sources of energy, and emission rates of greenhouse gases is also presented. It is concluded that the current plans of the Canadian government to deal with greenhouse gas emissions have not been effective. (shrink)

The mounting pollution burden has raised the need for renewable energy demand throughout the world. The study aims to explore the effect of public debt on renewable energy consumption for selected 23 Asian economies for the time period 1990–2019. Long-run empirical findings of the group-wise symmetric ARDL model reveal that increasing public debt results in declining renewable energy consumption. However, findings of the long-run group-wise asymmetric ARDL model reveal that positive shock in public debt (...) reduces renewable energy consumption, and negative shock in public debt results in increasing renewable energy consumption. The economy-wise empirical findings of the FMOLS model reveal that an increase in public debt results in increased renewable energy consumption in nine economies and decreased renewable energy consumption in six economies. The asymmetric FMOLS findings reveal that positive shock in public debt increases renewable energy consumption in nine economies and also decreases renewable energy consumption in nine economies. However, a negative shock in public debt increases renewable energy consumption in 12 economies and decreases renewable energy consumption in 5 economies. Additionally, this research provides numerous policy implications for renewable energy sources in Asian economies. Asian governments should use public debt for the consumption of renewable energy resources. (shrink)

Social licence to operate (SLO) is the ongoing acceptance or approval for a development that is granted by the local community and other stakeholders. From the current media and political attention on Australian wind farms, it appears that many specific wind farms, or indeed the industry as a whole, may not hold an SLO with affected stakeholders. This research was undertaken to examine whether the SLO might be a useful framework to enhance engagement and increase societal understanding of wind farms. (...) Twenty-seven interviews across nine wind farms were conducted with stakeholders representing wind companies, local government authorities, local opposition, local support and turbine hosts. The interviews revealed a complexity of concerns that informed the stakeholders’ perspectives, including “game-changing” issues that may stand to significantly increase wind farm acceptance. The results are presented with practical steps towards the development of a preliminary working model of an SLO for Australian wind f.. (shrink)