• Energy Research
• 13. Climate action close
• 12. Responsible consumption close
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Abstract Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan are the two countries in Central Asia that have a huge reserve of hydro resources of the region. It is important to recognize the significance of the part played by the micro-hydropower plants (HPP) in the electric power generation in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan from the point of view of sustainable economic development. After all, the construction of micro-HPPs in mountainous areas will reliably ensure the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of agriculture and livestock, industry, tourism, improve the social conditions of the population, as well as ensure the production of “green” hydrogen, which will contribute to the development of an environmentally friendly transport system in the regions. Micro HPPs gained recognition as a good alternative to traditional power generation for many developing countries around the world. This study presents a structural model and methodology of choice of a feasible type of micro HPP using the developed algorithm for calculation of hydro turbines’ characteristics based on the hydrological characteristics of small and shallow watercourses located in Central Asian countries, such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Based on this model, the software “Calculation and choosing the type of hydro turbines for micro HPPs” has been developed. Depending on the load, a consumer can choose one of the suggested types of micro-hydroelectric power plants to meet his requirements. When choosing the type of micro-hydroelectric power station, a consumer should also take into account the factor of the seasonality of the water level, the constancy and speed of the water, and the volume of river water, since in some places the water freezes in winter.

Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted tremendous research attention in the recent past fromindustry and academia. IoT is quite helpful in uplifting living standards by transforming conventional technology into smart systems. Greenhouse production is considered as an ultimate solution for rising global food demands with the growing population. Greenhouse provides a year-round production facility for fresh vegetables with around 50% increased production rate in comparison to open-air cultivation. However, energy consumption and labor cost in greenhouses account for more than 50% of the cost of greenhouse production. In this paper, we have proposed a novel optimization scheme that aims to achieve a trade-off between energy consumption and desired climate setting in greenhouse i.e. temperature, $${\mathrm{CO}}_2$$ level, and humidity. For performance evaluation of the proposed system, we have developed an ad-hoc emulator of the greenhouse environment. For the proposed model validation and experimental analysis, we have used 15 days of external environmental data collected in Jeju, South Korea. Proposed optimization scheme results are compared with a baseline scheme. Comparative analysis of experimental results shows that our proposed model maintains desired indoor environment for maximizing crop production with 26.56% reduced energy consumption than the baseline scheme. Furthermore proposed model achieve a 27.76% cost reduction when compared to the baseline scheme. Better optimization results of the proposed scheme give us the confidence to further investigate its effectiveness in a real environment for achieving improved energy efficiency.

As a result of analysis of the influence of various factors on biogas release, it has been found that the gas yield depends for different organic materials on the exposure time. The percentage of methane in the gas increases with increase of the fermentation time.

Abstract This study analyzes the socio-economic impact of electrification with special attention to gender dynamics using evidence from the Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan. We employ survey data and stakeholder interviews to evaluate changes in education, health and economic opportunities. We find that women in grid-supplied communities are on average 27% more literate and complete more years of schooling compared to women in off-grid communities. Households in grid-supplied communities report a lower incidence of diseases, lower child mortality, improved access to ante-natal care, and higher vaccination rates, but they also endure a higher incidence of respiratory diseases due to cooking indoors. We show that switching from off-grid to grid-supplied electricity would allow households to power either 4,200 hours of LED light, 1,340 hours of TV, or 55 hours of hotplate usage at no additional cost. Access to grid-supplied electricity also enables economic opportunities which is reflected in the average higher income by a factor of 5.9 compared to households using solar panels. Moreover, households with grid-electricity save time on the collection of biomass fuel, e.g. for households using firewood, the daily time saving potential amounts to 5 hours. Consequently, men spend on average more time with their children and are more likely to provide help with household tasks that are typically in the female domain in grid-supplied households. Nonetheless, we find that access to grid electricity has mixed effects on education, health and economic outcomes, especially with regards to gender dynamics. Therefore, we challenge the assumption of a linear relationship between electrification and associated impacts, and stress that structural, institutional and power dynamics exert greater influence on education, health and economic outcomes than access to electricity alone.

To help answer questions about availability, accessibility, sustainability and other dimensions of energy security, the vulnerability approach concentrates the attention of policymakers on the assessment of risks associated with natural, technical, political and economic factors. This understanding, combined with a focus on energy services (e.g. lighting, heating, telecommunications, mobility, etc.) helps to prioritize actions to achieve the goal of energy security. This paper conceptualizes energy security as low vulnerability of vital energy systems and sustained provision of modern energy services. Taking Tajikistan as a case, this paper highlights key vulnerabilities including neglect of environmental conditions, insufficient energy production capacity, unreliable and expensive energy imports, dwindling power infrastructure causing technical and economic losses, inadequate transparency in the power sector, lack of regional cooperation in energy and water resources sharing, and inadequate financial resources to address these challenges. Three major proposals presented by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Government of Tajikistan to achieve energy security in Tajikistan are evaluated. Specifically, they lack a focus on energy services and therefore overlook people's socio-cultural context and appropriate energy needs. This paper highlights energy services as critical to people’s wellbeing and socio-economic development.

Based on a case study in central Kyrgyzstan, this paper examines the links between the environment, rural livelihoods, and labor migration. The low diversity of income-generating activities in rural areas increases vulnerability to climate change impacts, other environmental stresses, and market failures. As a result, additional livelihood strategies such as labor migration and engagement in trade or other business ventures have become essential coping strategies for rural households. Remittances sent by migrants contribute not only to individual rural households but also to rural community development. Remittances help repay loans that have been taken out by households for different purposes, particularly for running or expanding farming and animal husbandry. When remittances are spent to increase livestock herds, the resulting intensive use of nearby pastures often leads to overgrazing and land degradation.

Cloud computing is the de facto platform for deploying resource- and data-intensive real-time applications due to the collaboration of large scale resources operating in cross-administrative domains. For example, real-time systems are generated by smart devices (e.g., sensors in smart homes that monitor surroundings in real-time, security cameras that produce video streams in real-time, cloud gaming, social media streams, etc.). Such low-end devices form a microgrid which has low computational and storage capacity and hence offload data unto the cloud for processing. Cloud computing still lacks mature time-oriented scheduling and resource allocation strategies which thoroughly deliberate stringent QoS. Traditional approaches are sufficient only when applications have real-time and data constraints, and cloud storage resources are located with computational resources where the data are locally available for task execution. Such approaches mainly focus on resource provision and latency, and are prone to missing deadlines during tasks execution due to the urgency of the tasks and limited user budget constraints. The timing and data requirements exacerbate the efficient task scheduling and resource allocation problems. To cope with the aforementioned gaps, we propose a time- and cost-efficient resource allocation strategy for smart systems that periodically offload computational and data-intensive load to the cloud. The proposed strategy minimizes the data files transfer overhead to computing resources by selecting appropriate pairs of computing and storage resources. The celebrated results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique in terms of resource selection and tasks processing within time and budget constraints when compared with the other counterparts.

AbstractThis study presents a reconstruction of the seasonal mass balance of Glacier No. 354, located in the Akshiirak range, Kyrgyzstan, from 2003 to 2014. We use a distributed accumulation and temperature-index melt model driven by daily air temperature and precipitation from a nearby meteorological station. The model is calibrated with in situ measurements of the annual mass balance collected from 2011 to 2014. The snow-cover depletion pattern observed using satellite imagery provides additional information on the dynamics of mass change throughout the melting season. Two digital elevation models derived from high-resolution satellite stereo images acquired in 2003 and 2012 are used to calculate glacier volume change for the corresponding period. The geodetic mass change thus derived is used to validate the modelled cumulative glacier-wide balance. For the period 2003–12 we find a cumulative mass balance of –0.40±10mw.e.a-1. This result agrees well with the geodetic balance of –0.48±0.07mw.e.a-1over the same period.

Central Asia is a vital link in the huge Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that follows much of the ancient Silk Road routes in this region. Other than the economic expansion and trade benefits associated with this complex infrastructure system, little is known about the many of the exogenous issues and direct environmental and socioeconomic impacts surrounding the BRI in Central Asia. This opinion paper takes a sharper look at some of these externalities and potential effects through a sustainability lens. Major environmental concerns focus on the proliferation of spur roads that will develop off upgraded or new Belt Roads to promote exploitation of natural resources. Steep, high-elevation landscapes in the Pamirs and Tien Shan pose problems for road location and construction, and the history of road building in less formidable terrain in Yunnan, China is unsustainable, leading to epic landslide and gully erosion, which degrade river systems. Furthermore, many socioeconomic issues may arise like debt dependencies of poor countries, spread of communicable diseases into remote communities, depletion of mineral resources, and implicit compliance with pro-China policies. While some of the poorer post-Soviet nations can reap short-term benefits from BRI plans, it is urged that they assess the long-term sustainability of BRI development and play an active role in determining the conditions for implementation.

Given the demand for green economic growth and sustainable development, many economic practices demonstrate different rates and characteristics of the transition to a green economy, which in one way or another are determined by the initial socio-economic factors and the economic policy implemented by the state. Stimulating green growth and increasing the well-being of society through the rational use of natural resources, natural capital and ecosystems require the elaboration and development of alternative measures for ensuring the rational use of natural resources, the development of environmental innovations and human capital. An equally important factor contributing to green growth is the formation of a state policy of green economic growth, as well as tools and mechanisms for its implementation. The conceptual foundations of a supranational green growth policy have already been developed and the methodological basis has been elaborated. The study of the experience and best practices of green growth in different countries allows us to identify certain shortcomings that require a deeper study and revision of state regulation documents. In addition, the post-Covid economy requires a separate consideration from the point of view of both the relevance of the policy of green growth and the measures and tools for its implementation. Thus, the study of modern trends and principles of the implementation of the state policy of green growth is a topical area of research that requires critical rethinking for the introduction of more constructive measures for reaching the set goals and objectives.