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The transition to low carbon energy systems poses challenges in terms of energy efficiency. In building refurbishment projects, efficient technologies such as smart controls and heat pumps are increasingly being used as a substitute for conventional technologies with the aim of reducing carbon emissions and determining operational energy and cost savings, together with other benefits. Measured building performance, however, often reveals a significant gap between the predicted energy use (design stage) and actual energy use (operation stage). For this reason, lean and interpretable digital twins are needed for building energy monitoring aimed at persistence of savings and continuous performance improvement. In this research, interpretable regression models are built with data at multiple temporal resolutions (monthly, daily and hourly) and seamlessly integrated with the goal of verifying the performance improvements due to Smart thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs) and gas absorption heat pumps (GAHPs) as well as giving insights on the performance of the building as a whole. Further, as part of modelling research, time of week and temperature (TOWT) approach is reformulated and benchmarked against its original implementation. The case study chosen is Hale Court sheltered housing, located in the city of Portsmouth (UK). This building has been used for the field-testing of innovative technologies such as TRVs and GAHPs within the EU Horizon 2020 project THERMOSS. The results obtained are used to illustrate possible extensions of the use of energy signature modelling, highlighting implications for energy management and innovative building technologies development.

Abstract Purpose Investigating potential social and socio-economic impacts should play a key role for the development of sustainable mobility alternatives. Social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) is becoming increasingly important to ensure holistic sustainability assessments. The present work aims at identifying and evaluating social and socio-economic impact subcategories in S-LCA. A novel participatory approach implying all concerned stakeholders is proposed to select relevant impact subcategories and thus contribute to a thorough interpretation of S-LCA results. It is applied to assess electric and conventional vehicles. Methodology This paper describes a comprehensive step-by-step S-LCA framework. The innovation of this work consists in defining a structured S-LCA framework integrating a systematic approach based on two stages: (1) a sectorial risk analysis for the identification of impact subcategories and (2) a participatory approach for their prioritization. The proposed participatory approach considers all concerned stakeholders to enable the selection of the most relevant impact subcategories. A set of social inventory indicators is attributed to subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. These are used to perform the social evaluation and carry out a full analysis in the result interpretation allowing thus to integrate a multi-actor perspective to the materiality assessment. Results The defined S-LCA framework is implemented to compare two mobility scenarios, corresponding to electric and conventional vehicle technologies. A new set of mobility-related impact subcategories is proposed for users’ stakeholder. Following the new designed participatory approach, subcategories for all stakeholders are prioritized according to different actors’ perceptions. For example, “safe and healthy living conditions,” “local employment,” and “delocalization and migration” were perceived for local communities as the most relevant subcategories by the different consulted stakeholders (industrial, academic, and public actors and users). These results also showed that social significance varies depending on the consulted actors and on the geographical area of the study. Using PSILCA database, we have investigated the subcategories that were perceived as the most relevant. Results for the evaluation and interpretation phases are presented for both transportation technologies. Conclusions This approach aims at increasing local relevance of S-LCA results and their representativeness. Results for the considered mobility scenarios have demonstrated the need to extend the scope of the materiality assessment, generally used for determining subcategories’ social significance from a single stakeholder perspective, by involving other stakeholders into the prioritization stage. Moreover, the proposed comprehensive S-LCA framework integrating the participatory approach is general enough to be applied to other product systems and sectors.

Space travel, often used by the authors as an equivalent to ‘space tourism’, and outer-space migration should become part of the sustainability discourse – that is the most tempting argument of the...

Our-Energy.eu digital platform (Phase 1) will be the NEWCOMERS project webpage, offering the project key content and at the same time will also provide an interactive digital educational, awareness-raising and networking web tool for energy communities and interested EU citizens.

Domestic (household) biogas plants constitute a growing sub-sector of the anaerobic digestion industry worldwide but have received low interest for improvements. The Chinese dome digester (CDD 1), a major type of domestic biogas plants, is a naturally mixed, unheated and low technology reactor mainly used in rural and pre-urban areas for cooking using animal manure. In this study, a multiphase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model was applied to evaluate an optimized CDD design and outcomes were compared with results of pilot scale experiments. The optimized digester (CDD2) under goes self-agitating cycles created by the pressure variation from the produced biogas with the aid of a baffle at the top of the reactor, whereas the blank (CDD 1) does not self-agitate. The optimized digester has two pressure zones to improve mixing viz. the self-agitation cycles. The optimized digester is characterized by more, stable and improved hydraulic characteristics and mixing.

The objective of this research was to evaluate economic benefit and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction potential of a family-scale anaerobic cowdung biogas digester. Research was conducted at two villages in Lampung Province, namely Marga Lestari, District of South Lampung and Pesawaran Indah, District of Pesawaran. Economic benefit and GHG emission reduction potential were evaluated from LPG saving due to biogas utilisation for cooking and fertilizer substitution by slurry digestate. Results showed that a family-scale anaerobic cowdung biogas digester demonstrated a good potential to reduce GHG emission, but not in economic. A digester with 4 heads of cow produced biogas at a rate of 1582 L/day. With average methane content of 53.6%, energy value of the biogas was equivalent to 167 kg LPG and able to substitute 52 bottles LPG annually. A family-scale biogas contributed 108.1 USD/year and potentially reduced GHG emission by 5292.5 kg CO2e/year resulted from biomethane potential, LPG, and fertilizer savings.Article History: Received November 15th 2016; Received in revised form January 16th 2017; Accepted February 2nd 2017; Available onlineHow to Cite This Article: Haryanto, A., Cahyani, D., Triyono, S., Murdapa, F., and Haryono, D. (2017) Economic Benefit and Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Potential of A Family-Scale Cowdung Anaerobic Biogas Digester. International Journal of Renewable Energy Development 6(1), 29-36.http://dx.doi.org/10.14710/ijred.6.1.29-36

To address major threats to the sustainability and quality of life in urban settings, many municipalities have started exploring routes toward smarter cities to, for example, lower their energy consumption and carbon footprint. These explorations, in the form of living labs or other pilot projects, often suffer from major problems in scaling up the initial try-outs. In this study, we identify the mechanisms that facilitate the diffusion of smart city solutions, which are developed with public funds but typically lack dedicated resources to spur the diffusion of these solutions within the same municipality as well as toward other municipalities. We introduce the construct of embedded replication potential, defined as the capacity of an original project to be either scaled up locally or replicated elsewhere. Subsequently, empirical findings from a study of smart lighting projects in several municipalities in northwestern Europe serve to develop a checklist-based tool for assessing the embedded replication potential of an initial project. This tool can also be used to assess the replication potential of other smart city projects.

The implementation of sustainability-oriented practices in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been discussed frequently over the years. Recent studies on sustainability have focused mainly on links between ecological and economic sustainability. This exploratory study aims to explore institutional barriers and facilitators regarding the implementation of sustainability-oriented practices in the Indonesian batik industry and to provide policy recommendations. The Indonesian batik industry is well-known for its cultural heritage and for being part of the Indonesian identity. Batik products are mostly hand-crafted by women crafters. The study used in-depth insights from two focus groups conducted with entrepreneurs active in the batik industry, while also building on earlier empirical insights. The lack of customer knowledge and socio-cultural and regulatory factors were found to be barriers to sustainability in batik SMEs. Ecological, technological, socio-cultural, and political factors were found to facilitate achieving sustainability objectives. This study contributes to the sustainable entrepreneurship and women entrepreneurship literature by considering facilitators and barriers as they are experienced by batik entrepreneurs and by furthering the conceptualization of sustainable entrepreneurs as either “committed” or “followers”.