Energy Efficiency最新文献

Workplaces constitute substantial energy consumers, underscoring the essential role of employees' behaviors in the realm of energy saving. The energy-saving behavior of employees is intricately shaped by a confluence of psychological and organizational factors, personal norms, environmental awareness, and environmental consciousness. However, the combined impacts of organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior in influencing employees' energy-saving intentions and behaviors have received little attention, despite prior studies acknowledging the importance of both individual and organizational factors. This study consists of two separate research studies. Study I included a survey of 354 service employees in Adana, Türkiye, employing a convenience sampling method to quantitatively assess the impact of individual attitudes, social cognitive factors, and job attitudes, specifically organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior, on employees' energy-saving behaviors. The Theory of Planned Behavior and Social Exchange Theory were incorporated to create a comprehensive explanatory model. The results of structural equation modelling underscored the substantial influence of organizational citizenship behavior on energy-saving behavior. Expanding on these findings, Study II utilized an observational methodology, engaging 25 employees from the same sample, who were monitored by five trained observers to gain further insights into the actual manifestations of energy-saving behaviors in workplaces. The observational study has also confirmed the effect of organizational citizenship behavior on energy-saving behavior. In total, these complementary studies provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting employees’ intentions and behaviors regarding saving energy and offer practical insights for formulating effective organizational policies and interventions to encourage sustainable energy practices among employees.

Miscellaneous Electric Loads (MELs) account for roughly one quarter of building electricity use in most developed countries. A product-specific approach to lowering MELs electricity use in this category takes too long and costs too much because there are so many MELs, each providing unique services. An alternative approach focusing on key functionalities was therefore explored. These functionalities include: (1) power management, (2) power scaling, and (3) power conversion. Cross-cutting efficiency improvements to these functionalities can be incorporated into broad categories of MELs, thus saving electricity and lowering costs. Even though the population of MELs is diverse and rapidly evolving, major technical opportunities exist to improve their efficiency in these functionalities. Research into energy-saving solutions within the cross-cutting technologies will probably have larger savings than focusing on single products.

Manufacturing SMEs play an important role in addressing the EU’s energy and climate challenges, as significant contributors both to economic output and greenhouse gas emissions. In Finland, these enterprises are vital for the national economy and sustainability goals but face significant barriers to energy optimization and Industry 4.0 adoption. Existing research often treats manufacturing SMEs as a homogeneous group, not addressing the diversity of barriers and drivers across micro, small, and medium-sized organizations across this sector. This paper, based on the Enertelligence -project conducted in Finland’s Ostrobothnia region—one of the country’s most industrialized areas—studies these differences through interviews with manufacturing SME managers, utilizing a maturity table to reveal variations in readiness and maturity across company sizes. The findings show that SMEs’ size significantly influences energy transition readiness, influenced by available resources, technological capabilities, and willingness to act. Additionally, external factors such as regulatory complexity and limited market incentives further hinder progress. The research introduces the innovation ecosystem approach as a regionally grounded theoretical framework to support manufacturing SMEs in overcoming these challenges. The insights have wider relevance for Finnish industrial policy and provide practical guidance for policymakers, stakeholders, and researchers seeking to accelerate sustainable modernization within the manufacturing SME sector.

Geopolitical risks, energy security risks, and economic policy uncertainties play an important role in shaping energy consumption patterns, especially in times of economic and environmental challenges. However, their precise impacts are still insufficiently researched. To address this gap, this paper examines their effects on energy consumption in European Union countries from 1995 to 2022 while controlling for economic development, environmental degradation, industrialization, urbanization, and trade openness. The results, obtained using fixed effects feasible generalized least squares and two-stage least squares estimators, reveal that energy import dependence and economic policy uncertainty significantly and negatively affect final energy consumption across different model specifications and robustness analyses. This contrasts with the impact of geopolitical risk, which was positive but of lesser magnitude and only significant when tested jointly or controlling endogeneity. Additionally, the paper highlights two particularly intriguing and novel findings from the results, providing valuable implications for energy and environmental policy. First, the unexpected positive relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption suggests that extreme weather events driven by climate change are already disrupting energy systems in Europe, resulting in higher energy consumption. Second, while geopolitical risk increases energy consumption, energy security risk and economic policy uncertainty have the opposite effect, likely due to heightened uncertainty, which discourages investment and slows technological progress.

Mitigation of energy poverty (EP) is a relevant policy goal nowadays for governments worldwide. The determinants of household EP should be identified and analysed in order to design targeted policies for specific groups which mitigate EP effectively and efficiently. The aim of this paper is to identify the most relevant determinants of EP as well as research gaps in the academic literature on those determinants. For this purpose, a systematic review of the literature has been performed. We consider the positive or negative relationship of a specific factor with energy poverty, and also account for the degree of evidence, agreement and statistical significance of a given factor. The results show that many determinants have been considered in the literature, but most articles include a limited number of them. A negative relationship between energy poverty and household income as well as educational level of the household head is found. On the other hand, energy poverty is significantly and positively related to the age of the household head, the size of the household, the age of the dwelling and the employment status of the household members. Furthermore, households who live in a rented house, in a detached dwelling and in dwellings located in rural areas are more likely to be energy poor, when compared to those living in an owned house, flats or urban areas, respectively.

Most past analyses on distributed energy sources have employed large-scale stochastic optimization while taking into account the physics of the network, its control, its dimension and sometimes its investment costs. One may call it the physical/control aspect of the network. What is missing is a higher level and a broader view of the distribution of the network resources - a business-like policy toward resource distribution that provides for clear criteria on the relationship between risk (uncertainty, or volatility) and gain-over-costs. The dynamics of the energy market, and specifically, the renewable sector carry volatility and risks with similarities to the financial market. Here, we leverage a well-established, return-risk approach, commonly used by equity portfolio managers and introduce it to energy resources: solar, wind, and biodiesel. We visualize the relationship between the resources' costs and their risks in terms of efficient frontiers. We apply this analysis to publically available data for various US regions: Central, Eastern and Western coasts. Since risk management is contingent on costs, this approach sheds useful light on assessing dynamic pricing in modern electrical power grids. By integrating geographical and temporal dimensions into our research, we aim at more nuanced and context-specific recommendations for energy resource allocation. As an example, the lowest risk of 0.124 (in terms of standard deviation) for an expected return of 1.93% in Newark, New Jersey, USA has energy portfolio distribution of: 50.54%, 18.62%, and 30.84% for solar, wind, and biodiesel, respectively. Decision-makers may benefit from this approach, making informed and transparent selections to curate their energy supply.

At a time when India is making earnest efforts to achieve sustainable development goals, setting decarbonisation targets, this study is timely as it gives important insights for policy making. Electricity-energy saving behaviour is one of the sustainable goals to be achieved, as a part of larger sustainable development goals. This study explores the factors influencing electricity saving intentions and behaviour of generation Y and Z are supportive of sustainable development goals. We also tested the moderating effects of habit on the relationship between intention and behaviour. To achieve the objective of the study we used extended theory of planned behaviour (eTPB) as conceptual framework. The data of was collected from 347 respondents. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA), reveals that, information publicity, perceived behavioural control, attitude, and personal norms are sufficient conditions for electricity saving intention. They have a significant positive impact on intention. Intention in turn proved to be a significant determinant of actual behaviour and proved to be a necessary condition for a high level of actual behaviour. Habit showed a significant moderating effect on the relationship between intention and behaviour. The combination of both PLS-SEM and NCA techniques lends novelty to the study, as it brings to the fore the difference between sufficient and necessary conditions required to achieve the desired outcome.

Historic buildings reflect the architectural features and construction techniques of the era to which they belong. They provide detailed, concrete information about natural ventilation, lighting, drainage, heating, and cooling, namely, about the functional systems of the region and the era, and thus serve as an important source of inspiration and as a guide and contribution to the sustainable design of buildings in today's fast-growing construction industry, where the protection of the environment and human health has become increasingly important. Therefore, this study aims to develop a score-based comprehensive method to evaluate the unique functional systems of historic buildings in order to investigate and determine their sustainable and energy-efficient characteristics and utilization in detail. In addition to literature and archival research, field research and national and international standards on sustainable design and energy efficiency of historical buildings were used to develop the method, which was tested on buildings of the First National Architectural Period in Konya. The results showed that the design features of the historic buildings such as settlement and orientation, building form, envelope, elements and heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting systems were passively designed and offered sustainable solutions and opportunities in sustainable design and operation. Overall, it is shown that unique energy-efficient properties of functional system solutions in historic buildings can be revealed through a score-based methodology that can help to make more accurate decisions in the preparation and implementation of conservation and restoration projects, thus contributing to the sustainable preservation of buildings.

Following over a decade and a half of austerity measures, and with costs of delivering statutory duties soaring, UK local authorities’ resources and capabilities to deliver net zero are diminishing. Decarbonisation funding provided by central government, meanwhile, is awarded competitively. To secure long-term, place-based net zero investments under these unfavourable circumstances, UK local authorities are increasingly turning to public procurement. A prominent example is Bristol City Leap, a Joint Venture Company procured by Bristol City Council between 2018 and 2022 to deliver around £1bn of investment in energy infrastructure and service delivery over 20 years through a concession agreement. Drawing on workshops and interviews with key stakeholders and experts, this paper examines the risks and opportunities of procurement and early-stage delivery of this public–private-partnership model. Using insights from transaction cost economics, it finds that this agreement has significantly increased net zero investment in return for increased risk and transaction costs. To ensure successful, just, and equitable delivery of promised place-based net zero investments, significant procurement capabilities, careful due diligence procedures, continuing institutional oversight, and independent measurement and verification are required.