Energy for Sustainable Development最新文献

The global shift towards renewable energy sources presents promising prospects for environmental sustainability and social welfare. However, without proper management, this transition risks exacerbating disparities, creating winners and losers in the process. Achieving a just energy transition demands equitable distribution of benefits and costs alongside inclusive decision-making processes. Nonetheless, transition dynamics vary widely across contexts, necessitating a nuanced understanding of local specificities. This study identifies and characterizes injustices within renewable energy projects in Africa through a systematic review of 26 studies from 11 countries. Using content and thematic analysis supported by Atlas.ti software, various forms of injustice — distributive, procedural, recognition, and restorative — were delineated. Distributive injustices accounted for 58 % of all injustices, while procedural, restorative and recognition injustices accounted for 18 %, 15 %, and 9 %, respectively. Distributive injustices primarily arose from project siting, resource conflicts, the objectives of the renewable energy projects (grid stability vs local connectivity), and disparities in job creation. Procedural injustices manifested as regime dominance and limited community participation. Restorative injustices often manifested as inadequate mitigative measures and compensation, while marginalization and inadequate representation of vulnerable and minority groups underscored recognition injustices. The effects of these injustices included inequalities (49 %), resource dispossession (18 %), institutional lock-in (12 %), resource strains (6 %), and migration of labor force (6 %), among others. Additionally, the study highlights potentially misconstrued injustices arising from local communities' misunderstanding of the objectives and benefits of renewable energy projects in their localities. Overall, the findings underscore the subjective and context-specific nature of justice in energy transitions, emphasizing the need to consider contextual factors when delineating what injustices are in clean energy initiatives across diverse African contexts.

Indian Industry is gearing up to leverage hydrogen's potential as an alternative to fossil fuels. This paper answers three related questions that would help scale green hydrogen in Indian industry vital for sustainable development. First, is there an economic case for green hydrogen production in terms of cost-competitiveness compared to other hydrogen production sources i.e., coal and natural gas? Second, what is the cheapest way to subsidize green hydrogen? Third, how policies and frameworks can be designed to produce and procure green hydrogen at scale? Key findings include. First, at present, the levelized cost of green hydrogen is USD 4.45/Kg, which reduces to USD 3.26/Kg by 2025 and USD 2.45/Kg by 2030. The present cost of green hydrogen is nearly twice that of hydrogen produced from coal and about four times that of hydrogen produced from natural gas. In the absence of policy support, green hydrogen may become competitive in India only after 2030. Second, upfront Capital expenditure subsidy is the most suited cost-effective policy option with partial viability gap coverage, and its combination with Generation based incentive for 100 % coverage. Third, subsidies need to be complemented with deployment-based policies such as hydrogen portfolio standard (HPS) for scale adoption of green hydrogen in Indian industry.

Power mix risk management is a crucial aspect of energy sector decision-making. Amidst disruptive events, emerging economies struggle to sustain recovery and long-term progress, necessitating a focus on mitigating the impact of major incidents. However, power mix risk management often overlooks the pathways through which the system's structure is exposed to risks. Using a qualitative three-step approach, this study investigated inherent risks of the structure and managerial practices Belize's power mix, mapping its structure and actors, identifying underlying causes and exposure pathways, classifying risks into five major dimensions, and characterizing each dimension as complex, uncertain, or ambiguous. Belize's structural choices presented systemic paradoxes such as the application of fixed-cost models for volatile local renewable sources, the actor's ambiguity on key elements of the supply system, including reliance on electricity imports and the retirement of local supply assets, being perceived as a lack of commitment, increasing the threat of investing in the domestic supply market, and regulations seeking to attract investment and de-risk electricity supply projects that in turn locked-out new investment and technologies due to market size. Further, system mitigation practices were limited and primarily based on regulatory interventions, with risk dimensions varying and sometimes related, suggesting a need for expanded and consolidated mitigation styles.

Ghana's economic growth and development hinge on accessing affordable and reliable energy sources. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology appears promising due to Ghana's abundant solar resources. However, despite the nation's ambitious renewable energy goals outlined in the national master plan, these aspirations remain largely unfulfilled. This research addresses the urgent need to identify and analyze barriers hindering successful Utility-Scale solar PV technology implementation in Ghana. The research's significance lies in its potential to unveil multifaceted barriers and their intricate connections, shedding light on the root causes of stagnation in the solar energy sector. The study employs a mixed-method approach, beginning with a thorough literature review, followed by expert surveys using the Delphi method. The research then applies Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to uncover the interrelationships among the identified barriers, revealing how these barriers influence one another within the system. Subsequently, MICMAC analysis is used to classify these barriers based on their driving and dependence power, offering deeper insights into their relative influence and importance. The findings of this research reveal a range of barriers, including currency fluctuations, high capital costs, financial impediments, policy uncertainties, inadequate political commitment, grid integration challenges, skills shortages, reliance on foreign technology, troubleshooting difficulties, lack of robust incentives (specifically feed-in tariffs), stakeholder involvement gaps, and legal/environmental hurdles. Ultimately, this study aims to provide valuable insights to policymakers, industry stakeholders, and researchers, facilitating informed decision-making and strategic planning to unlock Ghana's vast solar energy potential to facilitate climate change mitigation and transition toward resilient and sustainable socio-economic development.

Amongst the communities at highest risk due from climate change in Bangladesh are the agricultural and fishing communities of the river island chars, which have poor access to clean, affordable and reliable energy. In this work, we undertake a workshop with char communities to understand annual variance in energy usage resulting from diverse livelihoods and, in doing so, explore hybrid renewable energy systems to meet such demands, exploring options in floating solar and wind energy based on HOMER model. PVsyst is utilized to model the detailed floating and land-based PV system, separately. The two most notable differences between floating and land-based PV are the aging rate and albedo, which produce a 5.97 % and 5.15 % difference in energy generation, respectively. Thermal loss factor, mismatch loss, aging loss, floating capital cost, and soiling loss were modelled to explore the performance of floating photovoltaics leading to a 27 % reduction in levelized cost of electricity.

The attainment of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal 7 is significantly impeded by the slow pace of clean cooking fuel adoption in Ghana and most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite continuous government efforts, firewood and charcoal remain the dominant cooking fuel choice in Ghana, posing health risks to households through indoor air pollution. Researchers have identified households' economic status, family size, the educational level of household heads, and access to fuel as factors that influence household cooking fuel choices in rural and urban areas. However, there is a dearth of research on the determinants of household cooking fuel choices in mining host communities despite the peculiarity of socio-economic, environmental and cultural factors in these settings. Using descriptive statistics and a multinomial logit regression model of 426 randomly surveyed households in the Newmont Ahafo Mines catchment areas in Ghana, this study showed that every unit increase in households' income index was associated with a 65 % higher chance of choosing Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) for cooking over charcoal. Conversely, larger families are less likely to choose electricity over charcoal but more likely to choose firewood over charcoal for cooking. Notably, the study found that households closer to the mine site were less likely to choose either LPG or kerosene over charcoal for cooking, suggesting that host communities in closer proximity to mine sites might have limited access to clean fuel options such as LPG. Based on these findings, the study suggests subsidies for clean fuels, and improving access to infrastructure for LPG distribution as a means to advance the transition to clean cooking fuels in mining host communities.

Excessive consumption of water resources is a major problem almost everywhere through the world due to the global increasiness of population and the underlying high rates of urbanization and industrialization. In this context, Solar desalination is proposed as an effective solution not only to produce water but also to mitigate the emissions of CO2, which thereby contributes to the limitation of global warming. This study presents an experiment that explores the use of solar energy in desalination systems, consisting in a parabolic dish solar concentrating “SCHEFFLER REFLECTOR” for desalination-hot water system (PDSCHWS) conducted in the weather conditions of Marrakesh in Morocco also an environmental analysis conducts to calculate the emission of CO2 and the carbon credit gained. The performance of the desalination system was achieved in real thermal conditions from January to May 2022 on several days each month. The investigated results reported that the efficiency of the system is 28.75 %. It actually produced 9000 cm³/day of distilled water with an electrical conductivity of 3.4 μS/cm which presented a significant reduction from the initial level of 4 ∗ 10³ μS/cm. The environmental analysis concluded that the carbon credit gained from the system is 529.69($), and the net carbon dioxide mitigation is 37.83 tons of CO2 emission over the lifetime of the system.

Solar PV power is still under-utilized despite the abundance of solar radiation in Uganda. There is need for empowering renewable energy landscape through unlocking the technical and economic feasibility of solar photovoltaic power. We analyzed data from 56 locations for the techno-economic and environmental assessment of photovoltaic power facilities in Uganda. This was based on weather data availability and accessibility to the national power grid. Analysis of the energy generation and different input factors was done using PVsyst 7.2. A three stage approach to losses was adopted: absorption of sunlight, conversion to DC and DC to AC conversion. Findings indicate that most of the countryside is suitable for construction of large scale grid-connected photovoltaic power facilities. Due to longer sunshine duration and stronger Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) which are associated with high energy yield, northern Uganda performed better than the rest of the country, making it a preferential siting for large scale grid-connected photovoltaic facilities. South western Uganda performed the poorest. After a thorough energy accounting and a list of all performance metrics, the viability of investing in grid-connected photovoltaic power facilities was assessed.

Reducing the energy demand in the building sector appears to be the most important aspect to make them energy efficient. Opting for durable minor interventions results in further reduction of embodied carbon. This paper proposes a method which combines the evaluation of the environmental impact of interventions together with the visual preservation of buildings. A new indicator, the Embodied Impact of Intervention (EII), was defined to evaluate the overall environmental impact considering three indicators within the Life Cycle Assessment: Global Warning Potential (GWP), Primary Energy Non-Renewable (PE-NRe), and net-Fresh Water (FW) offering the stakeholders a holistic view for selecting the most sustainable solutions for interventions in existing buildings. The methodology has been tested to a benchmark, (i.e., masonry wall components), considering low, medium, and high visual impact scenarios, and a lifespan of 100 years. A direct proportionality is shown between GWP and PE-NRe, whereas FW does not have a singular relationship with the other indicators as it is mainly influenced by the material production. High GWP values occur in scenarios in which Nature Based Solutions (236.82 kg_CO2eq) and Building-Integrated Photovoltaic panels are implemented (798.09 kg_CO2eq), being ≈2.7 and ≈9 higher than the same High Visual Impact scenarios without mitigation solutions. It was found that the visual impact of the interventions may not align with the corresponding EII, resulting in dichotomous scenarios with medium visual impact and low EII, or high visual impact and medium EII. In Low-Income Countries, using recycled materials can minimize the production phase, reducing EII, energy efficiency, energy usage and waste, to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goal in the long-term.

The increasing impacts of human-induced climate change in developing countries have spurred government policies, activism, and sustainability research aimed at reducing energy consumption. Understanding the electricity usage of buildings is crucial to cutting carbon emissions and achieving cost savings. This study addresses the challenge of establishing realistic and relevant energy benchmarks for educational institutions in developing countries, specifically focusing on the Western Cape, South Africa. Schools in this region exhibit significant differences in energy intensities but are currently assessed using the same reference standard. A top-down analysis was performed using descriptive statistics to develop energy performance benchmarks tailored to unique patterns of energy consumption in schools. Data from 31 less affluent schools were collected using smart meters to ensure accuracy. The proposed reference benchmarks, ranging from 12 to 37 kWh/m${}^2$ per year, are significantly lower than the existing 60 kWh/m${}^2$ per year benchmark, demonstrating substantial potential for energy savings. This nuanced benchmarking approach accounts for seasonal and term variations in energy usage, providing a more accurate comparison across schools. The research introduces a novel, context-sensitive benchmarking method that extends beyond existing standards by incorporating these variations. It underscores the importance of localized benchmarks for achieving school energy efficiency, contributing to environmental preservation and financial savings. The proposed benchmarks offer a robust framework for policymakers, standard bureaus, and education departments to craft energy efficiency policies that drive progress in the education sector. By addressing the unique energy usage patterns of schools, this approach facilitates targeted interventions, leading to improved energy management and sustainability.