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Abstract For 118 million residential housing units in the U.S., there is currently a gap between the potential energy savings that can be achieved through the use of existing energy efficiency technologies, and the actual level of energy savings realized, particularly for the 37% of housing units that are considered residential rental properties. Additional quantifiable benefits are needed beyond energy savings to help further motivate residential property owners to invest in energy efficiency upgrades. This research focuses on assessing the adoption of energy efficient upgrades in U.S. residential housing and the impact on rental prices. Ten U.S. cities are chosen for analysis; these cities vary in size across multiple climate zones, and represent a diverse set of housing market conditions. Data was collected for over 159,000 rental property listings, their characteristics, and their energy efficiency measures listed in rental housing postings across each city. Following an extensive data quality control process, over thirty different types energy efficient features were identified. The level of adoption was determined for each city, ranging from 5.3% to 21.6%. Efficient lighting and appliances were among the most common, with many features doubling as energy efficient and other desirable aesthetic or comfort improvements. Then using propensity score matching and conditional mean comparison methods, the relative impact on rent charged in each city was calculated, which ranged from a 6% to 14.1% increase in rent for properties with energy efficient features, demonstrating a positive economic impact of these features, particularly for property owners. This was further subdivided into five types of energy efficiency upgrade and three housing types. Single family homes generally demanded higher premiums with energy efficient features, however there was not a consistent pattern across the types of efficient upgrades. The results of this work demonstrate that investment in energy efficient technologies has quantifiable benefits for rental property owners in the U.S. beyond just energy savings. This methodology and results can also be used in other cities and by property owners, utility companies, or others, ultimately encouraging further investment and positive economic impact in residential energy efficiency and in turn improving energy and resource conservation in the building sector.

Abstract Nowadays, many countries adopt an active agenda to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by moving towards less polluting energy generation technologies. The environmental costs, directly or indirectly generated to achieve such a challenging objective, remain however largely underexplored. Until now, research has focused either on pure economic approaches such as Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models, or on (physical) energy supply scenarios. These latter could be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of various energy saving or cleaner technologies via Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. These modelling efforts have, however, been pursued in isolation, without exploring the possible complementarities and synergies. In this study, we have undertaken a practical combination of these approaches into a common framework: on the one hand, by coupling a CGE with a PE model, and, on the other hand, by linking the outcomes from the coupling with a hybrid input–output−process based life cycle inventory. The methodological framework aimed at assessing the environmental consequences of two energy policy scenarios in Luxembourg between 2010 and 2025. The study highlights the potential of coupling CGE and PE models but also the related methodological difficulties (e.g. small number of available technologies in Luxembourg, intrinsic limitations of the two approaches, etc.). The assessment shows both environmental synergies and trade-offs due to the implementation of energy policies. For example, despite the changes in technologies towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, only marginal improvements are observed in the climate change mitigation scenario as compared to the Business-As-Usual. The energy related production and imports are indeed expected to increase over time and represent a large contribution to the country’s impacts. Interestingly, side effects on other impacts than climate change or fossil resource depletion (e.g. ionising radiation and water depletion) may also occur mainly due to the use of nuclear energy in neighbouring countries.

Abstract Using a proprietary database of online job postings from 2010 to 2019, we find that job vacancies in the U.S. energy sector increasingly require high levels of “soft” skills (such as social, cognitive, people management, project management, and customer service skill), showing an “upskilling” pattern in the past decade. We further examine skill requirements across and within four major professional occupations in the U.S. energy sector and find substantial variations. Meanwhile, in the energy sector, although cognitive and social skills are the most frequently required skills, they do not positively contribute to firm productivity. Although the requirement for “hard” skills (such as products and marketing, engineering, and general computer skill) stays relatively flat, “hard” skills actually matter most in the energy sector, especially products and marketing and general computer skills are two most valuable skills, contributing the highest to energy firms. Our results indicate that energy firms should pay more attention to “hard” skills in human resource management, while not following the increasing trend of “soft” skills in hiring.

Electrical energy storage (EES) such as lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries can reduce curtailment of renewables, maximizing renewable utilization by storing surplus electricity. Several techno-economic analyses have been performed on EES, but few have investigated the financial performance. This paper presents a state-of-the-art financial model obtaining novel and significative financial and economics results when applied to Li-ion EES. This work is a significant step forward since traditional analysis on EES are based on oversimplified and unrealistic economic models. A discounted cash flow model for the Li-ion EES is introduced and applied to examine the financial performance of three EES operating scenarios. Real-life solar irradiance, load, and retail electricity price data from Kenya are used to develop a set of case studies. The EES is coupled with photovoltaics and an anaerobic digestion biogas power plant. The results show the impact of capital cost: the Li-ion project is unprofitable in Kenya with a capital cost of 1500 $/kWh, but is profitable at 200 $/kWh. The study shows that the EES will generate a higher profit if it is cycled more frequently (hence a higher lifetime electricity output) although the lifetime is reduced due to degradation.

This study examines the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth for 15 emerging market economies within a multivariate panel framework over the period 1980–2006. The heterogeneous panel cointegration results indicate there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between real GDP, coal consumption, real gross fixed capital formation, and the labor force. While in the long-run both real gross fixed capital formation and the labor force have a significant positive impact on real GDP, coal consumption has a significant negative impact. The panel causality tests show bidirectional causality between coal consumption and economic growth in both the short- and long-run.

Abstract One of the most promising renewable fuels proposed as an alternative to fossil diesel is biodiesel. The competitive potential of biodiesel is limited by the price of vegetable oils, which strongly influences the final price of this biofuel. On the other hand, extensive use of vegetable oils may cause other significant problems such as starvation in developing countries. Appropriately planning and designing the whole production process, from the seed to the biodiesel end-product, is essential to contain the influence of energy inefficiencies on the high price of the end-product. The present study reviews the technologies currently used in the production of biodiesel. We first discuss the technologies for extracting the vegetable oil from the seed, and its subsequent refining and conversion into biodiesel. This study focuses on the characteristics of the production processes currently used in the sector, illustrating the technological options and emphasizing the drawbacks of certain practices and the best choices available. The vegetable oils tend to be processed using procedures that are well established, but oriented more towards obtaining products suitable for the foodstuffs industry, and that consequently use technologies that are sometimes excessive for energetic purposes. The processes for extracting the vegetable oil from the seed generally include a set of steps, the complexity of which depends on the raw material. Basically, the two extraction technologies involved rely on the use of pressure or solvents. In practice, the two systems are often combined. Using the vegetable oils as a source of energy makes some of these steps superfluous and enables technologies to be used that would be unsuitable for foodstuffs production. This study focuses on feasible technological improvements that would give rise to oil that is still suitable for use as a source of energy, but at a lower cost. The refined vegetable oil can subsequently be converted into biodiesel by means of a great variety of technologies, many of which are still not suitable for applications on an industrial scale. The solution that has met with the greatest favor is homogeneous alkaline transesterification with KOH and methanol. Even when dealing with this type of conversion alone, it is impossible to establish a universal schema to describe the conversion or purification stages because there are numerous possible different solutions. When we then look more closely at the state of the art in industrial biodiesel production plants, we encounter the potential problems introduced by the type and characteristics of the original raw material. Comparing some of the reference solutions that have inspired numerous installations, a sensitivity analysis is conducted on the main elements involved in the process, focusing on their behavior in different working conditions to obtain products with the characteristics required by the international standards (EN 14214:2008, ASTM D 6751 07b).

Renewable hydrogen is increasingly recognized as one of the key decarbonisation options compatible with the EU's climate neutrality goal. We quantify possible cost reductions for renewable hydrogen production until 2050 through electrolysis with off-grid renewable electricity generation systems. We focus on the use of solar PV and on- and offshore wind energy in 30 European countries. We project that towards 2050 hydrogen production costs can fall below 2 €/kg in several countries in Europe. Hybrid configurations, consisting of both onshore wind and solar PV electricity generation, generally result in lower renewable hydrogen production costs. Systems with a relatively high level of full load hours benefit from a reduced share of investment costs for the electrolyser component. The levelized cost of hydrogen produced via solar PV systems can only compete with wind-based systems when significant electrolyser cost reductions are realized, despite the ultimately low expected levelized costs of solar PV-based electricity generation. The novelty of this analysis is that it proffers an overview of the dependencies of the costs of green hydrogen production, and how these costs could decrease over the forthcoming decades across a large set of European countries. Specifically, we show how the dynamics behind the projected renewable hydrogen production costs per country highlight the role that technological learning could have in identifying the most suitable locations for hydrogen production.

The publication gives an overview of the production costs of synthetic methane in a Power-to-Gas process. The production costs depend in particularly on the electricity price and the full load hours of the plant sub-systems electrolysis and methanation. The full-load hours of electrolysis are given by the electricity supply concept. In order to increase the full-load hours of methanation, the size of the intermediate hydrogen storage tank and the size of the methanation are optimised on the basis of the availability of hydrogen. The calculation of the production costs for synthetic methane are done with economics for 2030 and 2050 and the expenditures are calculated for one year of operation. The sources of volume of purchased electricity are the short-term market, long-term contracts, direct-coupled renewable energy sources or seasonal use of surpluses. Gas sales are either traded on the short-term market or guaranteed by long-term contracts. The calculations show, that an intermediate storage tank for hydrogen, adjustment of the methanation size and operating electrolysis and methanation separately, increase the workload of the sub-system methanation. The gas production costs can be significantly reduced. With the future expected development of capital expenditures, operational expenditure, electricity prices, gas costs and efficiencies, an economic production of synthetic natural gas for the years 2030, especially for 2050, is feasible. The results show that Power-to-Gas is an option for long-term, large-scale seasonal storage of renewable energy. Especially the cases with high operating hours for the sub-system methanation and low electricity prices show gas production costs below the expected market prices for synthetic gas and biogas.