Search

When looking for energy-saving solutions, one should bear in mind the savings that can be obtained through behavioral changes. The article shows that a simple incentive can have a statistically significant impact on employees’ pro-ecological behavior. First, the introduction refers to the general perspective of striving for a global implementation of the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs). Additionally, the stakeholders’ point of view is presented, based on reports submitted to the Responsible Business Forum competition (Poland). The two motivating trends are referenced, which include increasing the contribution of powering office buildings to the overall energy demand and increasing the appreciation of behavioral changes as alternatives or complements to technological solutions in pursuit of the SDGs. The following sections of the article present an experiment carried out at one faculty of the University of Warsaw, which consisted of checking the effect of the incentive to lower the temperature in offices after working hours on the actual change in the behavior of the employees. After several weeks of observation of end-of-day thermostat settings in several dozen offices, a statistically significant effect was found. This proves that even simple incentives can lead to pro-ecological behavioral changes.

Private households are an important group of energy consumers. Based on Eurostat data, their energy consumption constituted 30% of the final consumption of energy use across the European Union in 2021. The cost of energy is one of the main components of household budgets; thus, the prices provided by energy carriers have a significant impact on energy consumption. The price offered to the final consumer consists of three components: the price of energy and its supply, network costs, and taxes and levies. The values of the three components, however, depend on several factors, among which the structure of the energy markets and energy policies in individual EU countries play a key role. This work aimed to analyze and assess the structure of electricity prices offered to households across EU countries in the years 2019–2021. The differences and similarities between the pricing policies of selected products in the EU and their impacts on households’ purchasing capacity were captured and a non-pattern classification method (k-means) was applied as a research tool. The results indicated that the heterogeneity of the electricity price structure increased significantly over the period analyzed. This may be a consequence of the use of strongly differentiated tools to mitigate electricity price increases and the steps being taken towards low-carbon economies.

In recent years, research has emphasized the significance of mild clinical and biochemical presentations of primary aldosteronism (PA) that do not meet current diagnostic criteria of the syndrome. In this study, we assessed the prevalence of autonomous aldosterone (Ald) secretion (AAS), defined as a positive (>1.2 ng/dL/mIU/L) Ald-to-renin ratio (ADRR) combined with unsuppressed Ald (>4 ng/dL), and its associations with blood pressure (BP), cardiac function, and common carotid artery (CCA) intima-media thickness (IMT) in patients with incidentally discovered adrenal adenomas (AI), who were either normo- or hypertensive but had no other cardiovascular disease. Among 332 AI patients hospitalized between November 2018 and December 2019, 63 study participants were recruited (26 normo- and 37 hypertensive), who underwent hormonal examinations, 24 h ambulatory BP measurement, transthoracic echocardiography, and CCA IMT assessment without altering chronic medications. AAS was found in approximately 25% of subjects (seven normo- and nine hypertensive); urinary aldosterone excretion (UAldE) exceeded 10 ug/day in none of the subjects. The left ventricular mass index correlated positively with UAldE in non-diabetic patients (n = 50), and negatively with renin in those without beta blocker therapy (n = 38). The study shows that a pragmatic approach to hormonal assessment (no chronic therapy modification) may reveal patients with AAS. Screening for this subclinical PA presentation is probably more effective with a permissive ADRR than UAldE in such a setting.