• Energy Research
• AU close
• FR close
• RU close
• FI close
• Sustainability close

This paper provides an overview of insights and lessons learned from nearly 20 years of running a Master’s unit called Leadership in Sustainability and how it has been used to foster change agents in small business enterprises, as well as other parts of our economy and community. The unit is based on five ‘C’ pillars, which are discussed in this paper to show how the teaching was able to assist potential leaders in their journey towards sustainability. Collective Wisdom is the theory of how leaders have used their imagination to solve collective ‘wicked problems’ and how sustainability requires such wisdom. The unit covers such theory from innovation, complexity, leadership, management and sustainability literatures, and the students are required to show they used this in solving a problem. Conversations are the main tool that is used because only through integrating diverse opinions have solutions been found to such problems as sustainability. The unit is based around case studies from leaders (including SMEs) who have approached sustainability from various perspectives, and conversations were created with the leaders to illustrate this. Creativity is introduced as a tool that draws upon different layers of perspectives on how to tackle wicked problems, as well as facilitating the breadth of conversations and actions required to solve them. The unit requires students to make a creativity contribution and the teachers provide assistance in how to make this work. Contemplation is designed to show how leadership requires reflection to enable the creativity and conversations to reach the depth and breadth required. The unit introduces students to the Theory-U tools to help instil the link between creativity and reflection or contemplation in addressing sustainability challenges and enabling leadership that creates change in personal, organizational and social systems. Finally, Courage is shown as a necessary part of the role of a leader in sustainability to make the magic of collective and creative solutions, based on conversations and contemplation, come to life through a demonstration-based transition.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the prospects for the development of loading methods for gas turbines as well as to develop a mathematical model that adequately describes the real operating conditions of the loading system at various loads and rotation speeds. A comparative analysis of the most common methods and technical means of loading the shafts of a free turbine at gas turbine plants intended for operation as part of gas pumping units is presented. Based on the results of the analysis, the expediency of using the loading model “Free Power Turbine Rotor–Hydraulic Brake” as a load simulation is shown. Recommendations for the creation of an automation system for the load testing of power plants have been developed. Mathematical models and Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation models of power plants have been developed and tested. One of the most important factors that predetermine the effectiveness of the loading principle is the possibility of software implementation of the loading means using software control systems that provide the specified loading parameters of the gas turbine.

Identifying local energy sources and devising a circular economy could improve self-sufficiency in many Pacific Islands. On the islands with significant agriculture, the residue from the cultivation of plants has promising energy potential. The waste stream is another potential source of energy that otherwise should undergo proper treatment. Additionally, cold-storage capacity improves the preservation of crops and increases the agricultural exports of these islands. This study proposes a combined cooling and power (CCP) system driven by biomass from agriculture residue and waste streams as fuel for different districts in Tonga. The units supply a fraction of the districts’ electricity demand and provide sufficient cold-storage capacity to preserve the prospective yield of a fraction of fallow lands. The technical and economic performance of the CCP units was analysed for different fractions of electricity demand and fallow land exploitation in each district during a year of operation. The results show that the optimum combination of the CCP units supplies 38% of the total electricity demand of Tonga and prevents the annual consumption of 7.4 million litres of diesel and emission of 20 kilotonnes of CO2. In addition, it provides 3700 m2 of cold-storage area, which is sufficient for preserving the prospective yield of the exploitation of 27% of the total fallow land of Tonga. Annual export revenue of about AU$10 million is expected from such a cold-storage capacity for Tongan farmers. Furthermore, the units consume 10,000 tonnes of annual waste, significantly reducing waste management costs. This study presents an example of a comprehensive circular-economy solution for a remote island state that improves its socioeconomic and environmental condition by supplying the community’s local needs from its available and abundant resources under a viable business model. The solution presented in this study can be adapted to many island communities with significant agriculture in the economy and crucial energy and cooling needs.

While different in emphasis, spirituality and sustainable development are intertwined concepts that cannot be meaningfully discussed in isolation from each other. This is especially pertinent in Pacific Island countries that are characterised by both high degrees of vulnerability to climate change and high degrees of religious engagement. There is a paucity of research that examines the relationship between spirituality and sustainable development in contemporary human development discourse. To address this gap in the literature, this research employs an inductive and exploratory methodological approach to the study of major development organisations in Australia. It investigates what significance contemporary NGOs ascribe to matters of spirituality in the design and implementation of their community aid and development programming in the Pacific and beyond. To achieve its goal, the study conducts a systematic term frequency analysis in the annual reports of government-funded and independently funded NGOs, both faith-based and secular. It extends previous research by focusing expressly on the intersectionality of sustainable development and spirituality as a fertile space for interdisciplinary inquiry. The findings link development policy and practice more closely to the needs and worldviews of Pacific peoples. A better understanding of the spirituality–sustainability nexus will enable more effective, sustainable, equitable, ethical, and culturally acceptable development programming. Crucially, integrated approaches promise to make ongoing community development programmes and adaptation responses to climate-driven environmental change more effective and sustainable. Finally, it is an important aim of this study to conceptualise various opportunities for future research, thus laying the foundation for an important emergent research agenda.

Questions have arisen about the sustainability of the industrialised food system. Alternatives like urban agriculture have emerged to reduce the negative social, environmental and health impacts of industrial agriculture. Such new food supply chains can change the way that people acquire and process food. This study looks at high-tech indoor gardening practices in nursing homes for elderly people, studying four nursing homes in the Dutch city of Velp. We used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect data, using site visits, a survey amongst employees, and semi-structured interviewees with residents and decision makers. Inspired by social practice theory, we aimed to understand the transformation of existing practices, investigating how the gardens affect cooking and eating practices, and how their constitutive elements of meaning, material and competences enable these transformations. Our work shows that the indoor gardens resulted in an integration of gardening and the resulting harvest into cooking practices, which in turn transformed residents’ eating practices. Appreciation of the taste of fresh vegetables and appearance of the meal decorated by fresh vegetables, as well as observing the growth of plants and their use, holds value for the elderly residents. Employees welcome the possibility to serve healthier meals. The integration of indoor gardens in existing cooking practices is more successful when employees have gardening and/or cooking competences, when they enjoy cooking and when they do not already cook with fresh ingredients. The gardens are more easily integrated when they are easily accessible. The materiality of the gardens does not require fully equipped kitchens.

Today, the global food security is one of the most pressing issues for humanity, and, according to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the increasing demand for food is likely to grow by 70% until 2050. In this current condition and future scenario, the agricultural production is a critical factor for global food security and for facing the food security challenge, with specific reference to many African countries, where a large quantities of rice are imported from other continents. According to FAO, to face the Africa’s inability to reach self-sufficiency in rice, it is urgent “to redress to stem the trend of over-reliance on imports and to satisfy the increasing demand for rice in areas where the potential of local production resources is exploited at very low levels” The present study was undertaken to design a new method for land evaluation based on soil quality indicators and remote sensing data, to assess and map soil suitability for rice crop. Results from the investigations, performed in some areas in the northern part of the Nile Delta, were compared with the most common approaches, two parametric (the square root, Storie methods) and two qualitative (ALES and MicrioLEIS) methods. From the qualitative point of view, the results showed that: (i) all the models provided partly similar outputs related to the soil quality assessments, so that the distinction using the crop productivity played an important role, and (ii) outputs from the soil suitability models were consistent with both the satellite Sentinel-2 Normalize Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) during the crop growth and the yield production. From the quantitative point of view, the comparison of the results from the diverse approaches well fit each other, and the model, herein proposed, provided the highest performance. As a whole, a significant increasing in R2 values was provided by the model herein proposed, with R2 equal to 0.92, followed by MicroLES, Storie, ALES and Root as R2 with value equal to 0.87, 0.86, 0.84 and 0.84, respectively, with increasing percentage in R2 equal to 5%, 6% and 8%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed model illustrated that around (i) 44.44% of the total soils of the study area are highly suitable, (ii) 44% are moderately suitable, and (iii) approximately 11.56% are unsuitable for rice due to their adverse physical and chemical soil properties. The approach herein presented can be promptly re-applied in arid region and the quantitative results obtained can be used by decision makers and regional governments.

Drought is a noteworthy cause of low agricultural profitability and of crop production vulnerability, yet in numerous countries of Africa little to no consideration has been paid to readiness for drought calamity, particularly to spatial evaluation and indicators of drought occurrence. In this study, biophysical and socio-economic data, farmers’ community surveys and secondary data from remote sensing on soil characteristics and water demand were used to evaluate the predictors of drought in inland valley rice-based production systems and the factors affecting farmers’ mitigation measures. The study intervened in three West African countries located in the Sudan-Sahel zone, viz. Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria. Significant drying trends occurred at latitudes below 11°30′ whilst significant wetting trends were discerned at latitude above 11°30′. Droughts were more frequent and had their longest duration in the states of Niger and Kaduna located in Nigeria and in western Burkina Faso during the period 1995–2014. Among 21 candidate predictors, average annual standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index and duration of groundwater availability were the most important predictors of drought occurrence in inland valleys rice based-production systems. Land ownership and gender affected the commitment of rice farmers to use any mitigation measure against drought. Drought studies in inland valleys should include climatic water balance and groundwater data. Securing property rights and focusing on women’s association would improve farmers’ resilience and advance drought mitigation measures.

We present in this paper a qualitative study of couple ethical purchasing behavior, based on interviews with French consumers. The analysis of joint decision making allows us to distinguish between ethical couples who favor the choice of ethical products when making purchase decisions together and unethical couples who do not. Our results show that ethical couples are characterized by a positive exchange of information, use of verbal and tactical persuasion strategies, and trust in the knowledge of the partner, while unethical couples are characterized by a negative exchange of information, difficulties with joint decision making, and conflict-minimizing strategy. Time, money, and pleasure appear as the most critical factors restricting couples’ purchase of ethical products. Our research provides the first empirical evidence about the dynamics of influence of one partner over the other within couples regarding ethical purchasing behavior.