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Abstract This article examines Korean consumer responses towards second-generation lignocellulosic bioethanol. Consumer surveys were conducted in the Korean cities of Seoul, Incheon, Bucheon, Gwangju, Seongnam and Suwon with three information treatments for the purpose of this study. The survey collected data on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for this product, their driving patterns, knowledge about renewable energy, acceptance of relevant government policies, and demographic characteristics. A dichotomous-choice contingent valuation methodology is used to estimate WTP for this product and investigate factors that affect consumer choice. The findings include that the average respondent in the sample is willing to pay a 4.3% premium over second-generation bioethanol compared to conventional fuel. The mean premium is highest (6% premium) for respondents who received information about positive environmental effects of the advanced fuel. Being female and higher income positively affect WTP. Also higher self-reported knowledge about renewable energy sources and higher valuation of environmental friendliness positively affect WTP for advanced bioethanol.

Abstract Since the 1970s, countries have protected the environment by means of various legal instruments, including environmental approvals and licensing. An environmental task force created under the Hydropower Agreement was appointed by the IEA to compare and determine the efficiency and effectiveness of such mechanisms, as they apply to each phase of hydropower development (policy level, project planning, project implementation, plant operation and plant upgrading, relicensing and decommissioning). It also examined whether legal mechanisms respected ethical principles as well as the protection of the environment, human rights and the right to economic development. This paper reports on the essential findings outlined by the task force. It discusses common deficiencies in national legal mechanisms relating to hydropower development and also proposes practical solutions and potential improvements. The main conclusion of this study is that environmental approval and licensing processes have become excessively rigid and cumbersome in many countries and that governments need to rethink the approval process and reform the legal and regulatory frameworks. Governments should consider a mechanism such as a strategic environmental assessment implemented at the policy level and processes that systematically integrate information gathered by previous monitoring studies. And since hydropower development raises ethical dilemmas that are difficult to reconcile, some decisions should be made by the legislative branch and not by the executive branch or other decision-making body. Moreover, proponents should adopt a code of conduct based on ethics and principles of international environmental law.

While several actions are being taken to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from land-based transportation, marine transportations are often unnoticed. Ocean-going marine ships are accounted for a large amount of global GHG emissions. Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) are free from GHG emissions and playing an important role in sustainable development by lessening GHG emissions. Integration of RESs in ocean-going marine ships could be an option to make marine transportation free from emissions. Ocean-going marine ships require a large amount of reliable energy to support the propulsive load demand. RESs are intermittent, and a large amount of energy cannot be stored economically by the available energy storage techniques. Additionally, the penetration of RESs in a marine ship is limited by the available area and total weight carrying capacity of that marine ship. Because of these limitations of RESs in marine ships, there is a requirement of integrating other types of energy sources with RESs to support the baseload energy demand and to avoid the variableness of RESs. Conventional fossil fuel-based generators, like diesel generators, can be incorporated with RESs to overcome these shortcomings of RESs. However, as the penetration of RESs is limited to marine ships, most of the energy is supplied by fossil fuel-based generators. Therefore, the integration of RESs with fossil fuel-based generators merely reduces GHG emissions and is not a feasible option to make marine ships free from emissions. Fossil fuel-based generators need to be replaced by emissions-free and reliable energy sources to make the marine ships free from emissions. Small scale nuclear reactors, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and Microreactors (MRs), are free from GHG emissions and are competitive candidates to replace fossil fuel-based generators. In this paper, four different energy systems have been analyzed for marine ships namely ‘Stand-alone Fossil Fuel-based Energy System’, ‘Stand-alone Nuclear Energy System’, ‘Renewable and Fossil Fuel-based Hybrid Energy System’ and ‘Nuclear-Renewable Hybrid Energy System (N-R HES)’ in terms of certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The KPIs include the Cost of Energy (COE), Net Present Cost (NPC), and GHG emissions. The results show that the N-R HES could be the best energy system for the marine industry to reduce GHG emissions and improve economic performance. A sensitivity analysis is also carried out by changing certain parameters to reinforce the findings of this study.

Cold supply chains (CSCs) are responsible for preserving the quality of perishable goods in storage and transport. They consume significant amounts of energy to maintain cooling temperatures constant over time continuously and ubiquitously, which is affected by the surrounding environment and the users’ behavior. The storage filling level is one specific feature of refrigerated warehouses observed in practice: they are more energy efficient when kept full of items, reducing the space that air occupies. Inventory management models that consider energy consumption have received increasing attention recently due to an increase in stakeholders’ awareness of sustainability. Despite this interest, there is no work that jointly considers the effects of the filling level and the temperature inside the warehouse. This study, therefore, integrates those aspects into the economic order quantity model and finds the optimal lot size quantity that minimizes the total system cost, which is the performance measure used herein. It provides numerical results and brings some insights into the behavior of the model proposed.

Bulk chemicals production from biomass may compete with biofuels for low-cost and sustainable biomass sources. Understanding how alternative uses of biomass compare in terms of financial and environmental parameters is therefore necessary to help ensure that efficient uses of resources are encouraged by policy and undertaken by industry. In this paper, we compare the environmental and financial performance of using ethanol as a feedstock for bioethylene production or as a transport fuel in the US life cycle-based models are developed to isolate the relative impacts of these two ethanol uses and generate results that are applicable irrespective of ethanol production pathway. Ethanol use as a feedstock for bioethylene production or as a transport fuel leads to comparable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil energy consumption reductions relative to their counterparts produced from fossil sources. By displacing gasoline use in vehicles, use of ethanol as a transport fuel is six times more effective in reducing petroleum energy use on a life cycle basis. In contrast, bioethylene predominately avoids consumption of natural gas. Considering 2013 US ethanol and ethylene market prices, our analysis shows that bioethylene is financially viable only if significant price premiums are realized over conventional ethylene, from 35% to 65% depending on the scale of bioethylene production considered (80 000 t yr?1 to 240 000 t yr?1). Ethanol use as a transportation fuel is therefore the preferred pathway considering financial,GHGemissions, and petroleum energy use metrics, although bioethylene production could have strategic value if demand-side limitations of ethanol transport fuel markets are reached.

AbstractThis paper presents a Variable Speed Limit (VSL) control algorithm for simultaneously maximizing the mobility, safety and environmental benefit in a Connected Vehicle environment. Development of Connected Vehicle (CV)/Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology has the potential to provide essential data at the microscopic level to provide a better understanding of real-time driver behavior. This paper investigated a VSL control algorithm using a microscopic approach by focusing on individual driver’s behavior (e.g., acceleration and deceleration) through the use of Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach. A multi-objective optimization function was formulated with the aim of finding a balanced trade-off among mobility, safety and sustainability. A microscopic traffic flow prediction model was used to calculate Total Travel Time (TTT); a surrogate safety measure Time To Collision (TTC) was used to measure instantaneous safety; and, a microscopic fuel consumption model (VT-Micro) was used to measure the environmental impact. Real-time driver’s compliance to the posted speed limit was used to adjust the optimal speed limit values. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to compare the performance of the developed approach for different weights in the objective function and for two different percentages of CV. The results showed that with 100% penetration rate, the developed VSL approach outperformed the uncontrolled scenario consistently, resulting in up to 20% of total travel time reductions, 6–11% of safety improvements and 5–16% reduction in fuel consumptions. Our findings revealed that the scenario which optimized for safety alone, resulted in more optimum improvements as compared to the multi-criteria optimization. Thus, one can argue that in case of 100% penetration rates of CVs, optimizing for safety alone is enough to achieve simultaneous and optimum improvements in all measures. However, mixed results were obtained in case of lower % penetration rate which showed higher collision risk when optimizing for only mobility or fuel consumption. This indicates that with such % penetration rate, multi-criteria optimization is crucial to realize optimum and balanced benefits for the examined measures.

As it supplies solar power, a priori considered harmless for the environment and human health compared with fossil fuels, the photovoltaic (PV) industry seems to contribute optimally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, overall, to sustainable development. However, considering the forecast for rapid growth, its use of potentially toxic substances and manufacturing processes presenting health and safety problems may jeopardize its benefits. This paper aims to establish a profile of the PV industry in order to determine current and emerging environmental and health concerns. A review of PV system life cycle assessments, in light of the current state of the industry and its developmental prospects, reveals information deficits concerning some sensitive life cycle indicators and environmental impacts, together with incomplete information on toxicological data and studies of workers' exposure to different chemical and physical hazards. Although solar panel installation is generally considered relatively safe, the occupational health concerns related to the growing number of hazardous materials handled in the PV industry warrants an all-inclusive occupational health and safety approach in order to achieve an optimal equilibrium with sustainability. To prevent eco-health problems from offsetting the benefits currently offered by the PV industry, manufacturers should cooperate actively with workers, researchers and government agencies toward improved and more transparent research, the adoption of specific and stricter regulations, the implementation of preventive risk management of occupational health and safety and, lastly, greater responsibilization toward PV systems from their design until their end of life.