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This dataset underpins the study "Synergies and conflicts of energy development and water security in Africa". The study provides insights into energy supply and demand, power generation, investments and total system costs, water consumption and withdrawal as well as carbon dioxide emissions for the African continent. We developed a model to evaluate energy supply and water requirements to cover the energy needs of the African continent during the period 2015-2065. The model was developed using the open-source modeling system for long-term energy planning OSeMOSYS. The objective function is to minimise total energy system costs, rather than, for example, co-optimise the energy and water sectors. Other energy resources were also included in the model except for adding the water analysis, and the dataset was updated based on the latest available information. The OSeMOSYS model developed to conduct the study “Energy projections for African countries”, itself extended from the Electricity Model Base for Africa (TEMBA), was further extended, included exports for all fuels, water loss due to evaporation in hydropower plants and more scenarios examined. Furthermore, the latest available data on the energy system of Africa was also updated. The TEMBA model produces aggregate energy, and detailed power system results in each country in the African continent. The power sector results are also reported with power pool aggregation. The OSeMOSYS model and input data used to produce these results can be found at KTH-dESA/jrc_temba: TEMBA 2.1 (Version v2.1) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4889373 (Authors: Ioannis Pappis, Vignesh Sridharan, Will Usher, & Mark Howells. (2021). The initial study was funded by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (contract number C936531 - JRC/PTT/2018/C.7/0038/NC).

Nowadays in India the renewable energy sources are continuum growing to accommodate the current demands of energy. Therefore, for an effective use of this energy, a careful and critical analysis is required. As per literature review, India was reported having a massive potential as superpower source in terms of wind energy In the present research, an effort has been carried out to explore various decision making approaches such as TOPSIS, VIKOR, and Fuzzy analysis, to subsequently rank various Indian states with respect to their wind energy potential. In this perspective, potentiality indices have been found on the justification of five significant factors that influence the effective use of wind energy and then a classification has been proposed. It was found that the wind power density is the most significant parameter while the technical expertise has been found as the least significant among identified parameters. The results presented here indicates that among all alternative states of India, Tamilnadu and Maharashtra have the maximum potential to tap the wind energy potential. This study will act as a guide for various government agencies to re-evaluate and re-formulate their energy policies as well as will help various investors (under the ‘Make in India’ campaign) orientated to do business here, to take a well informed decision. The present study also provides a way to make strong policies, in the area of high wind energy potential, in order to maximize the use of renewable source of energy which allows to tackle the societal need and poverty.

AbstractMultinational conservation initiatives that prioritize investment across a region invariably navigate trade-offs among multiple objectives. It seems logical to focus where several objectives can be achieved efficiently, but such multi-objective hotspots may be ecologically inappropriate, or politically inequitable. Here we devise a framework to facilitate a regionally cohesive set of marine-protected areas driven by national preferences and supported by quantitative conservation prioritization analyses, and illustrate it using the Coral Triangle Initiative. We identify areas important for achieving six objectives to address ecosystem representation, threatened fauna, connectivity and climate change. We expose trade-offs between areas that contribute substantially to several objectives and those meeting one or two objectives extremely well. Hence there are two strategies to guide countries choosing to implement regional goals nationally: multi-objective hotspots and complementary sets of single-objective priorities. This novel framework is applicable to any multilateral or global initiative seeking to apply quantitative information in decision making.

<p>To understand how global warming can be kept well-below 2°C and even 1.5°C, climate policy uses scenarios that describe how society could transform in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Such scenario are typically created with integrated assessment models that include a representation of the economy, and the energy, land-use, and industrial system. However, current climate change scenarios have a key weakness in that they typically focus on reaching specific climate goals in 2100 only. <br><br>This choice results in risky pathways that delay action and seemingly inevitably rely on large quantities of carbon-dioxide removal after mid-century. Here we propose a framework that more closely reflects the intentions of the UN Paris Agreement. It focusses on reaching a peak in global warming with either stabilisation or reversal thereafter. This approach provides a critical extension of the widely used Shared Socioecononomic Pathways (SSP) framework and reveals a more diverse picture: an inevitable transition period of aggressive near-term climate action to reach carbon neutrality can be followed by a variety of long-term states. It allows policymakers to explicitly consider near-term climate strategies in the context of intergenerational equity and long-term sustainability.</p>

Much of the debate on sustainability is predicated on the belief that environmental demands lead to the production of sustainable technologies that induce environmental benefits. This fails to account for the influential ways technologies are used in practice, and the interactions between users and technologies that shape their environmental effects. This article uses the example of how cars and their drivers together accomplish the practice of driving through their interactions with each other, and explores the implications this has for generating environmental outcomes. We draw on a body of literature that argues how together, users and technologies participate in carrying out practices that actively shape outcomes, and we show how and why this applies to sustainability. The article presents the case of the Toyota Prius, analyzing Toyota’s intent in designing a sustainable car and contrasting it with the perspectives of thirty-eight of its drivers. We find that the possibility for fuel and carbon reduction is coproduced and is a result of complex interactions between technology, drivers, and driving practice.

Abstract Standardization of biogas technology is immensely important for the promotion of the biogas industry worldwide. China has built a complete biogas standard system, which is divided into common, household biogas, biogas engineering, biogas digester for domestic sewage treatment, output utilization, and service system standards. The problems and potential barriers for biogas standardization in China are analyzed and come down to sluggish standard, overlapped standard, government-dominated standard, and lagging international standard. Accordingly, all potential biogas standards should be evaluated and placed under the same department. China Biogas Society and China Association of Rural Energy Industry play leading roles in developing enterprise or group/association biogas standards and ISO biogas standards. The bio-natural gas standard system and experimental standardization should be developed as well to replenish biogas standard system. A paradigm shift in biogas standardization should be from government-dominated to market-oriented model. The lessons learned for other developing countries includes expanding standardization to multi-aspects to realize full lifecycle control and management, building rapid responding mechanism of standardization to adopt industry transformation, integrating outdated standards into new versions, and establishing market-based standard system.

The goal of this paper is to assess the suitability of hybrid PVT systems for the provision of electricity and hot water (space heating is not considered) in the UK domestic sector, with particular focus on a typical terraced house in London. A model is developed to estimate the performance of such a system. The model allows various design parameters of the PVT unit to be varied, so that their influence in the overall system performance can be studied. Two key parameters, specifically the covering factor of the solar collector with PV and the collector flow-rate, are considered. The emissions of the PVT system are compared with those incurred by a household that utilises a conventional energy provision arrangement. The results show that for the case of the UK (low solar irradiance and low ambient temperatures) a complete coverage of the solar collector with PV together with a low collector flow-rate are beneficial in allowing the system to achieve a high coverage of the total annual energy (heat and power) demand, while maximising the CO2 emissions savings. It is found that with a completely covered collector and a flow-rate of 20L/h, 51% of the total electricity demand and 36% of the total hot water demand over a year can be covered by a hybrid PVT system. The electricity demand coverage value is slightly higher than the PV-only system equivalent (49%). In addition, our emissions assessment indicates that a PVT system can save up to 16.0tonnes of CO2 over a lifetime of 20years, which is significantly (36%) higher than the 11.8tonnes of CO2 saved with a PV-only system. All investigated PVT configurations outperformed the PV-only system in terms of emissions. Therefore, it is concluded that hybrid PVT systems offer a notably improved proposition over PV-only systems. © 2014 The Authors.