• Energy Research

Abstract Provided that LED street lighting is guided by quality principles, outdoor illumination using light-emitting diodes will have a significant global impact helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, save relevant amounts of electricity and enhance the quality of life in cities as well as in remote areas. This study summarizes recent findings providing guidelines for further progress in this crucially important technology on the common pathway to sustainable development.

AbstractThe potential of weather forecasting is increasingly being exploited by power generators and transmission‐system operators as renewable electricity generation has become a significant and increasing part of the energy mix in many countries. Showing how the forecasts are interpreted and actually used, we suggest avenues for policy makers on how best utilizing meteorology in the unfolding energy transition through new, integrated meteorology and energy services.

Today's solar street LED lights are able to provide reliable, quality lighting both in developing and developed countries, thereby reducing light poverty and the economic and environmental costs of electric outdoor lighting. Rapid technical innovation and dramatic price reduction in the LED, PV module, and battery components, which has occurred in the last 5 years, will accelerate the penetration of solar street LED lights across the world. Applications will not be limited to countries with significant insolation only but will extend to Northern regions as well. This study provides a critical overview of a technology that will play an important role en route to global sustainability. WIREs Energy Environ 2017, 6:e218. doi: 10.1002/wene.218This article is categorized under: Photovoltaics > Systems and Infrastructure Solar Heating and Cooling > Economics and Policy Solar Heating and Cooling > Systems and Infrastructure

AbstractDuring the first half of 2015, for the first time, the zonal electricity price in Sicily decreased below than the national wholesale price in Italy. Showing the unique pattern of electricity consumption in Italy's largest region at different time scales, we identify the effectiveness of the impact of renewable power generation on utility‐scale in Sicily upon the whole of Italy's electricity market. Increasing the electrification of the energy end uses, as it is happening despite prolonged reduction in electricity demand, will lead to further benefits for power consumers throughout the whole country.

AbstractWe investigate hydrodynamic cavitation to inactivate commonly employed Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strains in an aqueous solution using different reactors and hydraulic circuit selected to demonstrate the process feasibility on the industrial scale. The target to achieve an useful lethality of the yeast at lower temperature when compared with standard thermal and even with other cavitation processes was achieved, with 90% yeast strains lethality at lower temperature (6.3–9.5°C), and about 20% lower energy input. A separate model simulating the combined thermal and cavitational effects on yeast lethality allows to accommodate the data into a comprehensive framework providing a tool to design further targeted experiments and to predict results when changing the process parameters.

Produced in many world’s countries at over 1 million tonne/year rate by extraction of certain woods and barks with boiling water, tannin is a class of high molecular weight biophenols increasingly used in a number of industries. This study offers a new bioeconomy insight into an old natural product that, we argument in this study, will play a crucial role in the development of the bioeconomy of forest regions. After providing an updated picture of key economic and production aspects, we show how flourishing research on tannin’s biological activity and technological applications has revealed many new properties which are likely to drive significant growth in demand in the near and mid-term future. The study concludes with selected recommendations for bioeconomy scholars and for policy-makers based in forest areas.

Abstract Wise utilization of today’s new solar energy technologies provides buildings with new aesthetic value which is no longer in conflict with efficiency in solar energy conversion. We outline the criteria for incorporating solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal (ST) technologies in the building design in Sicily’s built environment. Better education in solar energy and in solar architecture of architects and civil engineers, as well as better communication efforts of solar energy companies, will be instrumental to afford the long-awaited local and global boom in the adoption of building-integrated PVs.