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Energy poverty vulnerability constitutes a significant concern in Portugal, with 17.5% of the population being unable to keep their home adequately warm. Furthermore, there is evidence that a substantial number of children live in unhealthy homes. This study aims to comprehensively characterise a sample of 101 Portuguese families with children and their homes in order to identify opportunities for actions for promoting long-lasting energy efficiency and environment health-promoting behavioural changes. To accomplish this aim, two tools—a building survey checklist and a questionnaire to participants—were developed and implemented to collect harmonised data on building-specific characteristics and on participants’ socioeconomic status and behaviour. The home visits for recruitment and data collection were conducted from July 2021 to April 2022. The results suggest that, for the population under study, the main opportunities for improvement include: (i) replacing low energy-efficient technologies, with high emission rates, namely those used for heating purposes, with cleaner and more efficient alternatives; (ii) providing citizens with detailed information about their home’s energy use and indoor air quality and (iii) educating the population on the best-practices for reducing indoor air stuffiness, mitigating the risk of hazardous exposures, improving thermal comfort and saving energy.

The aim of this paper is to investigate households’ willingness to adopt technological and behavioral energy savings measures, in their dwellings and for daily mobility. Based on the evidence that occupants’ behavior has a major impact on energy uses at home and on the road, this paper aims at investigating which determinants influence household preferences for energy-saving measures, both technical as well as behavioral ones, as well as highlighting the key determinants for adopting energy-savings measures, at the household scale. This paper will attempt to shed more light on the factors that may bridge the intention–behavior gap. The analysis is based on an empirical survey carried out in the Netherlands. Main results show that (1) behavioral energy saving measures are more acceptable than technical ones; (2) the adoption of energy savings measures at home is more likely than on the road; (3) there is a relatively small market for technical energy measures, especially through the initial investment and the low return on investment; (4) environmental aspects seem to be more important for relatively expensive technical energy measures; (5) the reason for taking technological energy measures is rather to be found in differences among socio-demographic background than in environmental concerns; and (6) comfort at home and on the road is an important explanatory variable that many respondents used to justify not implementing energy savings measures and should be investigated in further research.

The development of the bus rapid transit system (BRTS) is tremendously growing in developing countries of the world. In large cities, the projection of transportation intends to enhance economic growth and changes the image of the city for both residents and outsiders. The purpose of this research was to study the application of alternative options for energy efficient BRTS in developing countries. The BRTS has some of its accessibility patterns that relate to the socio-economic strata. A decision-making efficiency analysis methodology has been applied to analyze the comparative analysis of both conventional fuel and hybrid bus systems for the Multan city of Pakistan. The section-wise application of a hybrid energy-based bus system has been analyzed in comparison to the conventional bus system. Out of 21 stations, the efficiency-wise hybrid bus system remained superior or equivalent to the standard value of 1 except one midpoint section. The finding of the analysis indicates that the hybrid mechanism of buses can not only replace a conventional fuel-based system, but will also help as an energy-efficient and eco-friendly economical solution. This study will help to revolutionize the bus rapid transit system in developing countries.

This study examines the long-term relationship between carbon emissions and a number of researchers engaged in Research and Development (R&D), economic development, foreign capital inflows, renewable energy and population growth in 26 countries between 1995 and 2015. Pedroni’s panel cointegration test confirms the cointegrating relationship between the variables. Long-term elasticities are derived from FMOLS regression. Researchers in R&D and renewable energy are negatively and significantly related to carbon emissions. There is a positive and significant long-term relationship between GDPs per capita and CO2 and between the FDI and CO2. Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s panel causality test revealed unidirectional causality running from economic development to carbon emissions and feedback hypotheses between the FDI and CO2 and between renewable energy and CO2.

The implementation of energy efficiency improvement actions not only yields energy and greenhouse gas emission savings, but also leads to other multiple impacts such as air pollution reductions and subsequent health and eco-system effects, resource impacts, economic effects on labour markets, aggregate demand and energy prices or on energy security. While many of these impacts have been studied in previous research, this work quantifies them in one consistent framework based on a common underlying bottom-up funded energy efficiency scenario across the EU. These scenario data are used to quantify multiple impacts by energy efficiency improvement action and for all EU28 member states using existing approaches and partially further developing methodologies. Where possible, impacts are integrated into cost-benefit analyses. We find that with a conservative estimate, multiple impacts sum up to a size of at least 50% of energy cost savings, with substantial impacts coming from e.g., air pollution, energy poverty reduction and economic impacts.

One of the key challenges of developing countries is to tackle the mitigation of the impacts of rapid and uncontrolled urbanization. Assessing this phenomenon is crucial to lessen the consequences for the environment and society. ‘Literature has been concentrated in planning strategies for the cities’ adaptation and engagements to the principles of green development ensuring a long-term quality of life for their citizens. Hereby, smart technologies and applications consist of two of the most encouraging concepts for solutions for achieving the 2030 and 2050 horizon targets towards clean energy transition and carbon neutrality. In academia, scholars have already raised the importance of ‘smartness’ to define the adaptative patterns for the global pressures of climate change and uncontrolled urban growth. The mitigation of these phenomena is crucial to ensure the cities’ future and lessen their impacts. This study seeks a strategic and smart-driven vision to leverage smartness on the phenomenon of rapid urbanization that occurred in the case of Beijing, China. Defining and evaluating the environmental impacts in line with the RIAM approach as one of its main targets. Future works can be focused on addressing solutions in similar cases in further developing countries to not only overcome environmental, but also economic, social, and digital complications.

Households’ energy consumption has received a lot of attention in debates on urban sustainability and housing policy due to its possible consequences for climate change. In Europe, the residential sector accounts for roughly one third of the energy consumption and is responsible for 16% of total CO2 emissions. Households have been progressively highlighted as the main actor that can play a substantial in the reduction of this energy use. Their behavior is a complex and hard to change process that combines numerous determinants. These determinants have already been extensively studied in the literature from a variety of thematic domains (psychology, sociology, economics, and engineering), however, each approach is limited by its own assumptions and often omit important energy behavioral components. Therefore, energy behavior studies require an integration of disciplines through interdisciplinary approaches. Based on that knowledge, this paper introduces a conceptual framework to capture and understand households’ energy consumption. The paper aims at connecting objective (physical and technical) with subjective (human) aspects related to energy use of households. This combination provide the answers to the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and most importantly the ‘why’ questions about people’s behavior regarding energy use. It allows clarifying the numerous internal and external factors that act as key determinants, as well as the need to take into account their interactions. By doing so, we conclude the paper by discussing the value of the conceptual framework along with valuable insights for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.