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Coal-based power generation accounts for over two fifths of global electricity supply and is supposed to be continuing its leading role in the coming decades. However, an integrated embodied energy accounting for typical coal-fired power system seems to be in its vacancy. To help erect a benchmark for energy analysis of electricity production, this study has for the first time established a complete inventory of energy inputs in the life cycle of a typical coal-fired power plant. Distinguished from previous works, with the support of ecological input–output database, this paper gives full consideration to the energy embodied in materials, equipment and services that have been traditionally neglected. The indirect energy cost is illustrated to be a non-negligible component, sharing around one-tenth of the total. This work could be a reference example for holistic energy evaluation of power generation systems worldwide. In current context of energy conservation and emissions abatement, it is of significant importance as the retrofitting of power generation systems may initiate large amounts of indirect energy cost. Besides, by calculating the nonrenewability indicator for the typical coal-fired power system, the energy saving potentials of several renewable alternatives are enunciated in this work. It may provide essential implications for policy makers in renewable deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydropower fuels the overall societal development by contributing a notable proportion to the whole global power generation. Although much attention has been paid to the development of hydropower, few of them attempted to gather global systematic data and conduct a large-scale review of scientific studies. In such situation, a bibliometric approach is employed in this study to quantitatively evaluate global scientific research on hydropower sustainable development, with a long time span ranging from 1991 to 2012. 434 publications in accordance with the search criteria from Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) database are analyzed statistically, and assessments on research development, current trends, and future directions are conducted in regard to eight categories. By synthetically analyzing the keywords, the dominant hotspots of hydropower sustainable research could be concluded as “Turkey”, “Eco-”, “Small hydro-”, and “Fish”. Along with a comparable number of publications to the United State, the keyword “Turkey” has exhibited a notable increase since 2000, revealing its predominance in the research on the hydropower sustainable development. Increasing attention has also been directed to the prefixes “Small hydro-” and “Eco-” in recent years. The keywords related to fish are identified from the keyword analyses as well, suggesting that the significance of fish studies has been recognized by researchers. Given the trend during the past several years, these topics are likely to become primary research focuses in the coming period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]