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Integrating electric vehicles (EVs) into the electric power system poses significant challenges to grid operation and planning due to the potential constraints on the power system. To minimize grid congestion, the best option is to increase the production of photovoltaic (PV) energy for domestic use and EV charging stations. This paper addresses the nexus of technical, financial, and environmental effects of customer involvement in economic development and load management. In this paper, a new model design of solar-powered EV charging stations is proposed and implemented in HOMER Grid, and a case study has explored how economic, technical, and energy management benefits can be achieved through customer energy involvement and the integration of PV-based charging stations. The proposed PV-based charging stations contribute toward the energy management of the region, and the study observes the real-time optimal charging and discharging strategy of PV-based grid-connected charging stations. The case study results show that the investigated area can produce 1,070,804.096 MWh/year of energy through maximum customer involvement, consequently reducing overall energy costs. Moreover, the study demonstrates that the selected region can produce 86,961,688 kWh/year through the PV system, achieving 363,899 charging sessions per year, offering maximum advantages and facilitation for EV charging. The proposed model applicability shows that large-scale customer involvement can bring significant techno-economic benefits and attract regional investments. • This paper proposes a new design of a grid-tied renewable energy system. • It investigates the energy economics and environmental effects for a practical location. • The research examines energy management including PV systems and electric vehicles. • The results of proposed model are compared with other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Energy efficiency, which is one of the pillars of the EU's Energy Union strategy, has been proposed as a solution, namely as a highly effective pathway to improve economic competitiveness and sustainability of the European economy, lower emissions, reduce energy dependency and increase security of supply, and job creation. The paper reviews the EU strategies and policies on energy efficiency and argues that further focus should be placed on industrial energy efficiency. Despite a decline in energy consumption in recent years in industry, this sector is one of the largest users of energy in the EU. Therefore, the paper reviews the extent to which the European and national policies in the selected jurisdictions, such as Italy and the UK address energy efficiency in industry and whether there are any measures in place to promote it. Highlights • Legal certainty is required in industrial energy efficiency policies. • White Certificates play a major role in industrial energy efficiency in Italy. • Yet, constant changes in the WC regulations can act as an investment barrier. • The UK's Energy Efficiency policy is underpinned with decarbonisation of the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this paper we identify a concept of countries' biomass-related sustainability through a revision of the literature and the opinion of professionals, and identify the main reasons that prevent biomass from being a major source of energy production (adversities and constraints). The Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology was used for establishing the causal and hierarchical relationships among the variables linked with the adversities and constraints associated with the production of biofuel from biomass and their impact on countries' biomass-related sustainability. At the base of the concept of biomass related countries' sustainability we identify an important constraint associated with the high energy production costs, but also the necessity of supporting new investments, which will drive technological innovations in this sector and allow for an increase in efficiency. The paper presents an innovative approach to the research of biofuel production from biomass by suggesting not only a concept of countries' biomass-related sustainability but also by exploring causal and hierarchical relationships between adversities/constraints of biofuel production and impact on countries' sustainability. Highlights • We develop a new concept of biomass-based sustainability of countries. • We implement an interpretive structural modeling approach. • We identify government policies and market costs as essential to innovation. • Economic may imply Social Sustainability. • There are interdependencies between Economic and Environmental Sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inaugurates the study of the energy-sustainable economic growth for Europe. It is novel both because it calculates an Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) index for European countries, but foremost because it compares the conventional energy-growth nexus with the newly appeared energy-sustainable growth nexus. Also, it goes further by suggesting ways to overcome the limitations pointed out to the use of the conventional GDP. The paper uses the road sector energy consumption, which is in accordance with the enormous discussion about the high energy intensity of the road transport sector and about the huge dependence from fossil sources of this sector. The dynamic Driscoll-Kraay estimator is also used, which allows decomposing the effects in the short- and long-run and is also robust in the presence of cross-sectional dependence. Results show that economic growth and sustainable economic welfare are not perfect substitute variables. In the long-run, the feedback hypothesis is verified only for sustainable growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has surpassed the United States to be the world's largest energy consumer, but a lot of energy was used to produce products for exporting to other countries. Presently, China faces a great challenge in energy security and environmental protection. This paper focuses on the energy embodied in China's foreign trade with a multi-regional input–output approach. Three versions of the GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) database were used to capture the trend and distribution of the embodied energy flows for China during 2001–2007. The results indicate that the energy embodied in the global trade is increasing rapidly, growing faster than the total direct energy exported in the same period. China is shown as an energy exporter in terms of embodied energy, and the embodied energy trade surplus increased from 156 million tons of oil equivalents (Mtoe) in 2001 to 514 Mtoe in 2007, with a proportion of domestic energy consumption increased from 14% to 23%. This paper also studies the effects of the energy-intensive industry restrictive export policy of China, and we find that this policy could reduce the national energy consumption and promote industrial structure upgrades effectively. However, the expansion of energy-intensive industries in other countries may reduce China's efforts for global energy saving and global warming alleviation. Our simulation shows that carbon leakage is about 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerating the upgrading of traditional energy industries has become a key area of concern for global green and sustainable development. Notably, few existing studies have focused on the spatial-temporal variability of energy industry advancedization and its resource-environment decoupling effect. This paper was the first to measure China's energy industry advancedization index based on the perspective of industry chain elements and value chain structure, analyzed the spatial-temporal evolution and elemental characteristics, and explored the resource-environment decoupling effect and nonlinear impact. The results showed that energy industry advancedization in China displayed a slow-growth trend from 2008 to 2020, and the spatial unevenness of energy industry capital and workforce advancedization gradually deepened. The decoupling effect of resource endowment dependence in the evolution of energy industry advancedization was better than that of environmental pollution, the spatial decoupling process was better in the eastern and central regions than in the western and northeastern regions, and the decoupling pressure of resources and environment in some regions was still significant. The trend of the nonlinear effect of energy industry advancedization on resource endowment dependence and environmental pollution showed an inverted "N" and "N" shape, respectively, and the nonlinear effect had obvious stage characteristics and regional heterogeneity. • An advancedization index is measured based on the energy industry value chain. • Low levels of energy industry advancedization are mostly energy-enriched areas. • The regional unevenness of the energy industry elements advancedization is deepening. • The pressure of resource-environment decoupling in the energy industry still exists. • Energy industry upgrading effects on resource-environment are nonlinear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solar-generated energy supply has been applied as a solution to address the increasing global population, global warming challenges, and the search for alternative sources of renewable and clean energy supply. Regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean have a significant rural population that lacks access to electricity, impeding their development, and increasing unemployment rates. This paper presents a system dynamics model (SD) for assessing the implementation of a solar energy supply chain (SESC), combining the analysis with the national industry's development for the manufacture of solar modules used in the implementation of solar farms and individual solution projects, especially in the non-interconnected zones of Colombia. This case study examines three scenarios in Colombia: national government-implemented solar farm projects; development of national supply chain implementation; and development of the solar energy market. These scenarios are evaluated using performance indicators for supply chain variables, including coverage, diversification, emissions, and job creation. The results indicate that implementing a supply chain and developing solar module production in Colombia can positively impact the proposed indicators, resulting in improvements of 5.9% in coverage, 6.3% in diversification, 6.7% in emission reductions, and 13% in job creation. • A novel model is developed for the solar energy supply chain. • The solar energy supply chain modeled prospectively and sustainably. • Analysis of energy, economic, environmental and social sustainability performance indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key issues of the sustainable development in all countries is industrial productivity improvement, especially the production capacity improvement and energy-saving of complex chemical processes. Therefore, this paper proposes a production prediction and energy-saving model based on Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) integrated Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The factors that affect the productivity are divided into different levers by the ISM. And then the attributes of each layer are fused by the AHP based on the entropy weight, which greatly reduces the complexity of the input attributes. Moreover, the production prediction and energy-saving model is established based on the ELM. Compared with the traditional ELM, the validity and the practicability of the proposed method are verified by University of California Irvine (UCI) datasets. Finally, the proposed method is applied in the production capacity prediction and energy-saving of ethylene production systems and Purified Terephthalic Acid (PTA) production systems. The experimental results show the proposed method could reduce the number of hidden layer nodes and improve the training time of the ELM. Furthermore, the prediction accuracy of the ethylene production and the PTA production reaches about 99% to improve the energy efficiency of complex chemical processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The distribution of energy and industry in China is extremely uneven. The western region is rich in energy resources but relatively economically backward, while the eastern region, particularly, the southeast coastal area, is an industrially-developed area but is short of energy resources. On the basis of such a situation, this paper recommends the sustainable development of energy systems for the western region. The specific innovative energy systems adopted here can convert the western region''s fossil fuels to alternative fuels and electricity with higher efficiency, lower investment cost, and less impact upon the environment. As one of such innovative energy systems, the MES (multi-functional energy system) can achieve 10–14% in the energy conservation ratio, 4–8% reduction of investment cost, and a 10–37% decrease of main pollutants. Moreover, its adoption will increase the income and accelerate the development of the energy industry in the western region, as well as meet the energy demand of the eastern region. The analysis in this paper presents a feasible energy road map for the rapid yet sustainable development of China''s western region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In view of limited natural resources on Earth, linkage among environment, energy, and economy (3Es) becomes important perspectives for sustainable development. This paper proposes to use Lotka–Volterra model for SUstainable Development (LV-SUD) to analyse the interspecific interactions, equilibria and their stabilities among emissions, different types of energy consumption (renewable, nuclear, and fossil fuel), and real GDP, the main factors of 3Es issues. Modelling these interactions provides a useful multivariate framework for prediction outcomes. Interaction between 3Es, namely competition, symbiosis, or predation, plays an important role in policy development to achieve a balanced use of energy resources and to strengthen the green economy. Applying LV-SUD in Mexico, an emerging markets country, analysing results show that there is a mutualism between fossil fuel consumption and GDP; prey-predator relationships that fossil fuel and GDP enhance the growth of emissions, but emissions inhibit the growth of the others; and commensalisms that GDP benefits from nuclear power, and renewable power benefits from fossil fuel. It is suggested that national energy policies should remain committed to decoupling the relevance between non-clean energy and GDP, to actively developing clean energy and thereby to properly reducing fossil fuel consumption and emissions without harming economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As required by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, utility companies across the U.S. are offering TOU (time-of-use) based electricity demand response programs. The TOU rate gives consumers opportunities to manage their electricity bill by shifting use from on-peak periods to mid-peak and off-peak periods. Reducing the amount of electricity needed during the peak load times makes it possible for the power grid to meet consumers' needs without building more costly backup infrastructures and help reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. Previous research on the applications of TOU and other electricity demand response programs has been mainly focused on residential and commercial buildings while largely neglected industrial manufacturing systems. This paper proposes a systems approach for TOU based electricity demand response for sustainable manufacturing systems under the production target constraint. Key features of this approach include: (i) the electricity related costs including both consumption and demand are integrated into production system modeling; (ii) energy-efficient and demand-responsive production scheduling problems are formulated and the solution technique is provided; and (iii) the effects of various factors on the near-optimal scheduling solutions are examined. The research outcome is expected to enhance the energy efficiency, electricity demand responsiveness, and cost effectiveness of modern manufacturing systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy and climate change is a key priority issue mentioned by the Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development (MSSD) which explicitly claims that “Control, reduce or stabilize GhG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions” is a crucial target for Mediterranean countries. This paper uses the integrated assessment model IFs (International Futures) to implement a scenario analysis to investigate the mitigation potential of Mediterranean regions. It analyzes if the Mediterranean regions will be able to reach the MSSD climate change target and recommends amendments of the MSSD to implement with effectiveness climate change policies in the Mediterranean area. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We propose in this paper an integrated energy strategy based on a systems approach to address the energy challenges and energy dilemma in China. First, we give a review of existing approaches to energy planning and strategic management, followed by a discussion on the major relationships among energy, economical, environmental and societal systems. Next, we present a conceptual system model with alternative solutions and clarify corresponding concepts. Based on the results, we propose, summarize, and present strategic ideas as policy implications for China’s decision makers. In conclusion, we determine that China should enhance strategic planning and regulation from a life cycle viewpoint of the whole society, prioritize energy saving, continuously improve incumbent energy, and rationally develop alternative energy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Energy is an essential factor in overall efforts to achieve sustainable development. Countries striving to this end are seeking to reassess their energy systems with a view toward planning energy programmes and strategies in line with sustainable development goals and objectives. This paper summarizes the outcome of an international partnership initiative on indicators for sustainable energy development that aims to provide an analytical tool for assessing current energy production and use patterns at a national level. The proposed set of energy indicators represents a first step of a consensus reached on this subject by five international agencies—two from the United Nations system (the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the International Atomic Energy Agency), two from the European Union (Eurostat and the European Environment Agency) and one from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the International Energy Agency). Energy and environmental experts including statisticians, analysts, policy makers and academics have started to implement general guidelines and methodologies in the development of national energy indicators for use in their efforts to monitor the effects of energy policies on the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]