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Biogas production is a clean renewable energy source that can improve lives in developing countries. However, winter temperatures in some areas are too low to enable enough biogas production in small unheated digesters to meet the energy requirements of households. Low-cost, high yield reactors adapted to the local climate are needed in those situations. A decision-support model was developed to assist in the design of biogas reactors capable of meeting households’ year-round energy needs. Monthly biogas production relative to household energy needs was calculated for the scenario of suburban Hanoi, Vietnam. Calculations included pig number, slurry (manure water mixture) dilution, retention time and biogas/solar heating. Although using biogas to heat the digester increased biogas production, it did not lead to an energy surplus, particularly with the 1:9 slurry dilution rate commonly used on pig farms. However, at a 1:3 slurry dilution, the use of solar heating to provide 90% and biogas 10% of the heat required to heat the digester to 35 °C improved the biogas production by 50% compared to psychrophilic production. The energy needs of an average five-person family throughout the year required 17 fattening pigs. This model can establish the best solution for producing sufficient energy throughout the year.

A brisk building boom of hydropower mega-dams is underway from China to Brazil. Whether benefits of new dams will outweigh costs remains unresolved despite contentious debates. We investigate this question with the "outside view" or "reference class forecasting" based on literature on decision-making under uncertainty in psychology. We find overwhelming evidence that budgets are systematically biased below actual costs of large hydropower dams - excluding inflation, substantial debt servicing, environmental, and social costs. Using the largest and most reliable reference data of its kind and multilevel statistical techniques applied to large dams for the first time, we were successful in fitting parsimonious models to predict cost and schedule overruns. The outside view suggests that in most countries large hydropower dams will be too costly in absolute terms and take too long to build to deliver a positive risk-adjusted return unless suitable risk management measures outlined in this paper can be affordably provided. Policymakers, particularly in developing countries, are advised to prefer agile energy alternatives that can be built over shorter time horizons to energy megaprojects.

Abstract Increasing fuel prices, concern about climate change and future energy security have led to tremendous global interest in the use of liquid biofuels in the transport sector which, in turn, has driven large-scale land acquisitions in developing countries for biofuel feedstock production. However, regardless of the vast nature of reported land deals and widespread concern about their potential negative consequences, implementation of most of the reported biofuel land deals in Ethiopia has not yet happened. Using a case study of large-scale jatropha plantation in Ethiopia, this paper examines the main causes underpinning the disappointing agronomic performance and finally termination of large-scale jatropha plantations. Although it has been argued that jatropha can be commercially grown well on marginal land without irrigation, this study indicates that moisture stress was the key factor in the failure of many large-scale jatropha plantations in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the use of untested planting material and conflict with local communities over the land were other important factors that contributed to termination of jatropha projects.

The relationship between consumption and deprivation has been explored at various scales in the literature. It would be expected that increased deprivation leads to less consumption and vice versa. However, what is the form of that relationship? Evidence from international studies using the Human Development Index (HDI) and Ecological Footprint (EF) for nation states suggest that the relationship is curved such that an increase in HDI (decrease in deprivation) is linearly associated with an increase in EF (consumption and impact on the environment) up to a point but beyond that there can be widely different values for the EF for the same value of HDI. Given that deprivation and consumption within a single country can be expected to be more homogenous than that observed between countries does this result in a linear relationship between the two variables? We tested the relationship between the Townsend Index of Deprivation (TID) and EF for English regions, using fine scale data as derived from the UK Census and the Stockholm Environment Institute respectively. The results suggest that the relationship between the EF and deprivation for most English regions is markedly linear; with the level of deprivation declining with increasing EF. The picture is remarkably consistent across most of the regions and the only region where this simple picture becomes distorted is London. The paper discusses the relevance of this finding and implications for future research.

The security of energy supply has again become a similarly hot topic as it was during the oil crises in the 1970s, not least due to the recent historical oil price peaks. In this paper, we analyze the energy security situation of the G7 countries using a statistical risk indicator and empirical energy data for the years 1978 through 2007. We find that Germany's energy supply risk has risen substantially since the oil price crises of the 1970s, whereas France has managed to reduce its risk dramatically, most notably through the deployment of nuclear power plants. As a result of the legally stipulated nuclear phase-out, Germany's supply risk can be expected to rise further and to approach the level of Italy. Due to its resource poverty, Italy has by far the highest energy supply risk among G7 countries.

AbstractThis paper uses data for 134 countries for the period 1960–2010 to document an energy ladder that nations ascend as their economies develop. On average, economic development results in an overall substitution from the use of biomass to energy sourced from fossil fuels, and then increasingly towards nuclear power and certain low-carbon modern renewables such as wind power. The process results in the carbon intensity of energy evolving in an inverse-U manner as per capita incomes increase. Fossil fuel-poor countries climb more quickly to the low-carbon upper rungs of the national-level energy ladder and so typically experience larger reductions in the carbon intensity of energy as they develop. Leapfrogging to low-carbon energy sources on the upper rungs of the national-level energy ladder is one route via which developing countries can reduce the magnitudes of their expected upswings in carbon dioxide emissions.

We study the impact of global climate change on the prevalence of tropical diseases using a heterogeneous agent dynamic general equilibrium model. In our framework, households can take actions (e.g., purchasing bednets or other goods) that provide partial protection from disease. However, these actions are costly and households face borrowing constraints. Parameterizing the model, we explore the impact of a worldwide temperature increase of 3°C. We find that the impact on disease prevalence and especially output should be modest and can be mitigated by improvements in protection efficacy.