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© 2021 Elsevier LtdDespite extensive research to address the impact of environmental reforms under the Paris Climate Agreement, current literature has failed to provide sufficient insights into Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) countries. To this end, the current study attempts to address the impact of the economic complexity on environmental quality in the presence of renewable energy consumption, financial development, urbanization and energy innovation in RCEP countries from 1990 to 2019. Our empirical estimates confirm a significant association between environmental quality, economic complexity index, renewable energy consumption, financial development, urbanization and energy innovation in the short-run and long run. Based on extensive econometric analysis (CS-ARDL, AMG, PMG, FMOLS, and DOLS), we conclude that economic complexity, renewable energy, and energy innovation effectively mitigate environmental degradation. At the same time, financial development and urbanization have an adverse impact on the environment. These findings have extensive policy implications for policymakers and environmental stakeholders, who are aiming to achieve sustainable energy policy and economic growth to meet the environmental commitments under Paris Climate Agreement.

This study aims to measure the relationship between technological progress, renewable energy, and green economic growth (GEG). This study uses a data envelopment analysis (DEA) estimation method to evaluate the association between government expenditure on research and development (R&D), renewable energy deployment, and GEG in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) between 1990 and 2018. The estimates revealed an inconsistent GEG indicator in the analysis, suggesting the lesser impact disposition of public policy. In addition, the energy efficiency ratio of ECOWAS subregion is under 0.50, implying energy poverty in the sub-region. Many people do not have sufficient energy to heat and cool their homes to enough temperature and meet their basic needs and energy security concerns. This research discovered that a percentage growth increase in renewable energy deployment results in a 3.2% increase in growth in sustainable performance. Alongside an essential effect of one percentage point growth in R&D expenditure boosts economic system sustainable performance to 4.4% combined with a supported effect of one percent. This research reveals that the ECOWAS government expenditure on human resources and R&D of sustainable energy resources would result in a low carbon growth via an advanced technological production process; nevertheless, the impacts are varied in the various countries in ECOWAS. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract One of the greatest problems in using renewable energy sources is the great variability of energy level, both in the short and long term. Geothermal energy, by nature, has high availability because the source is not dependent on weather conditions, so it is among the most stable renewable energy sources. In China, urban populations are provided with their electricity requirements, but rural areas need guaranteed electricity for socio-economic development. Fortunately, mid-low temperature geothermal resources are located proximal to rural areas without access to grid electricity in China. Small-scale geothermal power plants can support electricity demand as well as create employment opportunities for the rural public. Therefore, geothermal energy has the potential to play an important role in the future energy supply of China. Based on mid-low temperature geothermal resource and waste heat resource, the paper introduces the energy efficiency of single-flash and binary cycle geothermal power plant. The result shows that binary cycle plant is favorable for power generation when water temperature is below 130 °C, otherwise, flash steam power plant is a better choice. Furthermore, two project cases were analyzed in the end, focusing on the operating parameters and thermal efficiency. The single-flash and binary cycle geothermal power plants could be improved energy efficiency of low-grade resources and both widely utilized in China.

As wind power penetration increases, large wind farms (WFs) need to provide reactive power according to modern grid codes. Permanent magnet synchronous generator-based wind turbines (WTs) can generate reactive power, by assigning the appropriate reactive power to each WT to meet the reactive power requirements of the grid. This is a more economical method than setting up additional reactive power compensation equipment. This study proposes an optimal reactive power dispatch strategy for minimising a levelised production cost, and is implemented in two ways: minimising the power loss of a WF, and maximising the lifetime of WTs. The reactive power references of each WT are chosen as the optimisation variables, and a particle swarm optimisation algorithm is adopted to solve the optimisation problem. The proposed and traditional reactive power dispatch strategies are demonstrated and compared on a WF with 25 WTs to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Abstract As the world trade conflict intensifies in the photovoltaic (PV) industry recently, it would be important and timely to investigate the impact of the countervailing measure on the global PV supply chains and the non-conventional trade policy to mitigate the worsening trade effect. A simplified dual international competing PV supply chain system is developed to formulate supply chain game-theoretical models for the investigation. It is found that export subsidy (ES) scenario creates the highest total demands, supply chain profits and social welfare but at the cost of the importing country before it escalates to the most serious countervailing (CD) scenario. The key findings echo the classical trade conflict studies that any unfair trade policy will benefit only the country exercising the policy and will eventually lead to escalation of the trade conflict and bring economic damages to the trading stakeholders. A theoretical policy analysis is conducted to explore the impact on the supply chain when the export subsidizing country shares its economic gains with the importing country who might be planning to levy the countervailing duty on the imported solar product. The finding shows the gain sharing policy is possible to offset the economic loss and hostility of the importing country but still create more economic gains for the export subsidizing country. The gain sharing concept, though still in its theoretical phase, provides a more sustainable policy than the conventional retaliation approach which hinders the global solar supply chain growth, and prolongs the current head-on trade conflict between largest world economies.

Abstract Environmental sustainability has gained more importance in recent time to ensure socio-economic sustainability via healthy environment. The current decade has witnessed the rise of empirical research in the domain of ecological footprint, which has become a major scholarly area among environmental researchers. However, several key factors determining ecological footprint have been inadequately dealt with in the existing body of knowledge. The current research endeavour explores the association between economic complexity, human capital, renewable energy, urbanization, economic development, and ecological footprint in 20 countries divided into two panels (leading ten economic complex and renewable energy-consuming countries). This study applied panel data estimators, for instance, fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and the canonical cointegrating regression (CCR) long-run estimators to the period from 1980 to 2017. The results reveal that economic complexity, economic development, and urbanization increase the ecological footprint in both panels. Human capital and renewable energy induce ecological footprint, while renewable energy increases ecological footprint in the first panel. Based on empirical evidence, the study recommends the governments of these countries promote production processes that are friendlier to the environment and introduce greener technologies in exports for a drastic reduction in environmental pollution.

Abstract China's economy has flourished since reform and opening up. At the same time, China's ability to attract foreign investment in the world continued to increase. However, with the rapid development of the economy, China's energy crisis and environmental pollution have been continuously deepened, exposing increasingly serious problems in the energy consumption structure. As a critical mean to address the environmental problems and achieve sustainable development, the production and utilization of renewable energy resources is particularly critical. This paper aims to investigate the relationship amongst renewable energy consumption, foreign direct investment and gross domestic product in 31 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2015. Specifically, the unit root test, cointegration test, vector error-correction model, impulse response function analysis, and Granger causality test are employed for the estimations. The empirical results indicate that there is a long-term and stable equilibrium relationship between gross domestic product per capita, foreign direct investment per capita, and renewable energy consumption per capita. Additionally, in the short term, foreign direct investment cannot significantly cause renewable energy consumption change; but in the long run, a modest slowdown in gross domestic product growth and targeted foreign direct investment will generate a significant boost on renewable energy in China.

Abstract The power system planning requires the simulation of unit commitment (UC) for long time periods up to multiple years or decades which is conducted with production cost modeling (PCM) and usually ends up solving a number of mixed integer programming problems. The development of concentrating solar power (CSP) raises the computational burden of PCM dramatically due to its complex structural and operational characteristics, small unit capacity and large unit number. To improve the PCM efficiency for power systems with large scale CSP generation, a CSP clustering method is proposed based on a novel CSP unit model where the startup and heat accumulation process is considered to simulate CSP operation properly and avoid infeasible operation schemes. In the CSP clustering method, a series of CSP units are modelled in clusters and the numerous binary variables are replaced by integer ones. The number of the variables can be greatly reduced and so is the problem scale. The case studies on the modified IEEE-RTS 1979 have verified the validity and effectiveness of the proposed model and method. The CSP clustering method well outperforms the aggregated unit model which is introduced for comparison. The solution time for the UC with CSP is dramatically reduced (even by 1–2 orders of magnitude) with high accuracy especially the generation cost whose deviation is usually below 0.1%. The proposed method shows great potential in power system planning and operation with large-scale CSP generation.

Sustainable goals are achieved by utilizing private firms' investment in renewable energy sources. Globally, the demand for alternative sources of Renewable Energy (RE) and green finance (GF) has prompted an increase in research on these topics. This research applies a novel technique panel cointegration and causality model to evaluate the causes of green finance development in China between 1990 and 2020. This study adds information on the relationship between green finance and financial inclusion in the form of private firms' investments. The findings show that green finance and financial inclusion (FI) are beneficial to development globally and more granular. For every 1% growth in RE sources, there will be a 0.522% rise in trademark filings and a 0.1243% rise in private sector investment filings. The trademark and patent are promoted by 0.062% when financial inclusion is improved by 0.031%. Investment, commerce, and human progress have a calming effect on the connection discussed above. A variety of robustness tests supports our model results. This study's policy recommendations include decentralizing the energy industry to allow for more private sector participation; financial incentives for enterprises to use RE. It is clear from these findings that our study contributes significantly to the field of empirical research and also gives crucial policy recommendations. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.