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Access to reliable and affordable energy is vital for sustainable development. In the off-grid areas of developing countries, decentralized energy solutions have received increasing attention due to their contributions to reducing poverty. However, most of the rural population in many developing countries still has little or no access to modern energy technologies. This paper assesses the factors that determine the successes and failures of decentralized energy solutions based on local harmonized case studies from heterogeneous contexts from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America. The case studies were analyzed through the coupled lenses of energy transition and the Water–Energy–Food Security (WEF) Nexus. The findings indicate that access to modern decentralized energy solutions has not resulted in complete energy transitions due to various tradeoffs with the other domains of the WEF Nexus. On the other hand, the case studies point at the potential for improvements in food security, incomes, health, the empowerment of women, and resource conservation when synergies between decentralized energy solutions and other components of the WEF Nexus are present.

Received 4 September 2013 Received in revised form 21 November 2013 Accepted 28 November 2013 Available online 31 December 2013 Keywords: Anisole Pyrolysis Oxidation Tars Biomass Kinetic modeling 1. Introduction Environmental concerns such as the control of greenhouse gas emissions have led to an increased interest in the use of renewable energy. Biomass is widely used in combustion but can also be uti- lized in more advanced applications such as the production of a synthesis gas (syngas, a mixture of CO and H2), which can be used for the production of liquid fuels such as Fisher-Tropsch or meth- anol. Lignocellulosic biomass may be a promising feedstock through the gasification processes [1,2], but tar is also formed dur- ing gasification [3]. The tar content in the product gas is the major cumbersome and problematic parameter in the gasification pro- cesses [4]. Tar represents a complex mixture of over 100 com- pounds [5,6]. It leads to fouling, coke deposition, and catalyst deactivation. Hence, tar conversion or removal is one of the main challenges for the successful development of commercial gasifica- tion technologies and has been extensively studied [7,8]. Evans and Milne [5] defined three main classes of tars: primary tars (low temperature, oxygenated) and secondary and tertiary tars (benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons--PAHs, etc.). In com- bustion and gasification reactors, the heaviest (tertiary) tars are ⇑ Corresponding author. Fax: +33 3 83 37 81 20. E-mail address: pierre-alexandre.glaude@univ-lorraine.fr (P.-A. Glaude). abstract Anisole was chosen as the simplest surrogate for primary tar from lignin pyrolysis to study the gas-phase chemistry of methoxyphenol conversion. Methoxyphenols are one of the main precursors of PAH and soot in biomass combustion and gasification. These reactions are of paramount importance for the atmospheric environment, to mitigate emissions from wood combustion, and for reducing tar formation during gasification. Anisole pyrolysis and stoichiometric oxidation were studied in a jet-stirred reactor (673-1173 K, residence time 2 s, 800 Torr (106.7 kPa), under dilute conditions) coupled with gas chromatography-flame ionization detector and mass spectrometry. Decomposition of anisole starts at 750 K and a conversion degree of 50% is obtained at about 850 K under both studied conditions. The main products of reaction vary with temperature and are phenol, methane, carbon monoxide, benzene, and hydrogen. A detailed kinetic model (303 species, 1922 reactions) based on a combustion model for light aromatic compounds has been extended to anisole. The model predicts the conversion of anisole and the formation of the main products well. The reaction flux analyses show that anisole decomposes mainly to phenoxy and methyl radicals in both pyrolysis and oxidation conditions. The decomposition of phenoxy radicals is the main source of cyclopentadienyl radicals, which are the main precursor of naphthalene and heavier PAH in these conditions.

Currently, the world is facing two significant challenges: low-carbon development and overcapacity. Government departments must reexamine their development strategy of energy industry. Implementing environmental regulatory policies and technological innovation can help alleviate coal industry’s overcapacity, while sustainable development requires joint actions of governments, enterprises, and the market. Based on the evolutionary game theory, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of local government, power industry, and coal enterprise. Under the premise of bounded rationality, the evolution path of each player in the game under the market incentive environmental regulation is analyzed, and the influence of the change of parameters of each player on the result is numerically simulated. The study found that strengthening environmental regulation by local governments is an inevitable choice to promote the transformation and upgrading of coal industry and power industry. In addition, reducing law enforcement costs and technological innovation costs are the fundamental point of the coordinated development of the three parties. Technological innovation in the power industry will reduce the probability of coal companies’ choosing clean production strategies, while seeking low-cost clean production technology and financial support is the key to coal companies’ optimization of production capacity.

The built environment remains a strategic research and innovation domain in view of the goal of full decarbonization. The priority is the retrofitting of existing buildings as zero-emission to improve their energy efficiency with renewable energy technologies pulling the market with cost-effective strategies. From the first age of photovoltaics (PV) mainly integrated in solar roofs, we rapidly moved towards complete active building skins where all the architectural surfaces are photoactive (Building Integrated Photovoltaics - BIPV). This change of paradigm, where PV replaces a conventional building material, shifted the attention to relate construction choices with energy and cost effectiveness. However, systematic investigations which put into action a cross-disciplinary approach between construction, economic and energy related domains is still missing. This paper provides the detailed assessment of a real multifamily building, taking into account retrofit scenarios for making active the building skin, with the goal to identify the sensitive aspects of the energetic and economic effectiveness of BIPV design options. By assuming a real case study with monitored data, the analysis will consider a breakdown of the main individual parts composing the building envelope, by then combining alternative re-configurations in merged clusters with different energy and construction goals. Results will highlight the correlation between building skin construction strategies and the energy and cost parameters by identifying the cornerstones for enhancing efficiency. The outcomes, related to the total life cost, self-consumption/sufficiency, in combination with different building design options (façade, roof, balconies, surface orientations, etc.), provide a practical insight for researchers and professionals to identify renovation strategies by synergistically exploiting the solar active parts towards lower global costs and higher energy efficiency of the whole building system.

Abstract Using cross-sectional data, this paper estimates a national energy model of fuel choice by both households and firms. Consumers in warmer locations rely relatively more heavily on electricity rather than natural gas, oil, and other fuels. They also use more energy. Climate change will likely increase electricity consumption on cooling but reduce the use of other fuels for heating. On net, American energy expenditures will likely increase, resulting in welfare damages that increase as temperatures rise. For example, if the US warms by 5 °C by 2100, we predict annual welfare losses of $57 billion.

This paper constitutes a first analysis on stock returns and stock return volatility of energy corporations from the Eurozone. According to our results, the gas market does not play a role for the pricing of Eurozone energy stocks. However, changes in the Euro to U.S. Dollar exchange rate as well as developments at the money and especially at the oil market strongly affect returns of the energy stock portfolios analyzed. While oil price hikes negatively impact on stock returns of European utilities, they lead to an appreciation of oil and gas stocks. Most importantly, we show that oil market volatility negatively affects European oil and gas stocks. In contrast, energy stock volatility is not driven by volatility of the resource market, but only by its own dynamics.

In the United States, today’s ranches are engaging in small-scale nature-based endeavors to diversify their income base. But the geographic boundary of the land they own creates a relatively small area within which to operate, and fragmented ownership diminishes the ability of any single landowner to produce nature-based income. Collective action among nearby landowners can produce a set of resources from which all members of the group can profit. Such action can enhance the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of grasslands and the populations that use them. This article shows that common-interest communities can be used to provide and allocate wildlife and other resources on ranchlands, enabling individual landowners to generate more income from selling nature-based experiences to customers. Common-interest communities are familiar in urban settings but they have not yet been used in this setting. Thus, the article proposes a new approach to ranchland management based upon a familiar set of largely private legal arrangements. More broadly, the article illustrates the relevance of private law and private property to sustainable development by explaining how property owners can use private law to engage in environmentally beneficial and economically profitable enterprises on the vast privately owned landscape of the U.S. Great Plains.