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Purpose This study aims to consider environmental sustainability, a global challenge under the preview of sustainable development goals, highlighting the significance of knowledge economy in attaining sustainable aggregate demand behavior globally. For this purpose, 155 countries that have data available from 1995 to 2021 were selected. The purpose of selecting these countries is to test the global responsibility of the knowledge economy to attain environmental sustainability. Design/methodology/approach Results are estimated with the help of panel quantile regression. The empirical existence of aggregate demand-based environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) was tested using non-linear tests. Moreover, principal component analysis has been incorporated to construct the knowledge economy index. Findings U-shaped aggregate demand-based EKC at global level is validated. However, environmental deterioration increases with an additional escalation after US$497.945m in aggregate demand. As a determinant, the knowledge economy is reducing CO2 emissions. The knowledge economy has played a significant role in global responsibility, shifting the EKC downward and extending the CO2 reduction phase for every selected country. Further, urbanization, energy intensity, financial development and trade openness significantly deteriorate the environmental quality. Originality/value This study contains the empirical existence of aggregate demand-based EKC. The role of the knowledge economy is examined through an index which is calculated by using four pillars of the knowledge economy (technology, innovations, education and institutions). This study is based on a combined panel of all the countries for which the data was available.

The wind power forecasting error restricts the benefit of the wind farm in the electricity market. Considering the cooperation of wind power bidding and energy storage system (ESS) operation with uncertainty, this paper proposes a coordinated bidding/operation model for the wind farm to improve its benefits in the electricity market. The maximum entropy based deep reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm, Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) is used to construct the model. The maximum entropy framework enables the designed agent to explore various optimal possibilities, which means the learned coordinated bidding/operation strategy is more stable considering the forecasting error. Particularly, penalty terms are introduced into the benefit function to relax the constraints and improve the convergency. The case study illustrates that the learned policy can effectively improve the wind farm benefit while ensuring robustness.

With the 2015 Paris Agreement pursuing efforts to limit global temperature increase to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and the “energy trilemma” goals of energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability, decarbonisation remains a priority across all of the United Kingdom (United Kingdom) energy system, not just electricity. Electricity and thermal energy storage technologies can offer a host of benefits across the energy value chain through the abilityS to capture, store and then release electricity or thermal energy over a period of time. These benefits include helping capture the full potential of renewable generation and providing services such as frequency response and reserve to Great Britain’s (GB) electricity system. In addition, with the aforementioned climate targets in mind, energy storage can also play a role in facilitating the decarbonisation of other activities and sectors. Here we delve deeper into how energy storage technologies can contribute to both energy sector transformation and more broadly, decarbonisation. Furthermore, we discuss the importance of ensuring a technology-agnostic approach to the development of policy and regulation with relevance to energy storage. This ensures that storage technologies with significant potential to contribute to the ‘energy trilemma’ goals are not precluded from entering the market due to unfavourable policy and regulatory frameworks.

AbstractThis work reports the synthesis, characterization, photophysical, and photovoltaic properties of five new thieno[3,2‐b][1]benzothiophene isoindigo (TBTI)‐containing low bandgap donor–acceptor conjugated polymers with a series of comonomers and different side chains. When TBTI is combined with different electron‐rich moieties, even small structural variations can have significant impact on thin film morphology of the polymer:phenyl C70 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blends. More importantly, high‐resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy is used to investigate the phase‐separated bulk heterojunction domains, which can be accurately and precisely resolved, enabling an enhanced correlation between polymer chemical structure, photovoltaic device performance, and morphology.

Abstract The consumption of takeaway food is increasing worldwide. Single-use containers used for takeaway food represent a significant source of waste and environmental impacts due to their low recyclability. Consequently, it is important to identify the best available alternatives and improvement opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts of fast-food containers. For these purposes, this study estimates and compares for the first time the life cycle impacts of three most widely-used types of takeaway container: aluminium, polypropylene and extruded polystyrene. These are also compared to reusable polypropylene containers. The findings suggest that single-use polypropylene containers are the worst option for seven out of 12 impacts considered, including global warming potential. They are followed by the aluminium alternative with five highest impacts, including depletion of ozone layer and human toxicity. Overall, extruded polystyrene containers have the lowest impacts due to the lower material and electricity requirements in their manufacture. They are also the best option when compared to reused takeaway polypropylene containers, unless the latter are reused 3–39 times. The number of uses needed for the reusable “Tupperware” polypropylene food savers is even higher, ranging from 16 to 208 times, with terrestrial ecotoxicity being always higher than for extruded polystyrene, regardless of the number of uses. However, extruded polystyrene containers are currently not recycled and cannot be considered a sustainable option. If they were recycled in accordance with the European Union 2025 policy on waste packaging, most of their impacts would be reduced by >18%, while also reducing littering and negative effects on marine organisms. Most of the impacts of the other two types of container would also be reduced (>20%) through increased recycling. Implementing the European Union 2025 policy on recycling of waste packaging would reduce all the impacts by 2%–60%, including a 33% reduction in global warming potential. Based on 2025 million takeaway containers used annually in the European Union, the latter would save 61,700 t CO2 eq./yr, equivalent to the emissions of 55,000 light-duty vehicles. The outcomes of this study will be of interest to packaging manufacturers, food outlets, policy makers and consumers.

The successful electricity grid integration of solar energy into day-ahead markets requires at least hourly resolved 48 h forecasts. Technologies as photovoltaics and non-concentrating solar thermal technologies make use of global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasts, while all concentrating technologies both from the photovoltaic and the thermal sector require direct normal irradiances (DNI). The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has recently changed towards providing direct as well as global irradiances. Additionally, the MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition & Climate) near-real time services provide daily analysis and forecasts of aerosol properties in preparation of the upcoming European Copernicus programme. The operational ECMWF/IFS (Integrated Forecast System) forecast system will in the medium term profit from the Copernicus service aerosol forecasts. Therefore, within the MACC‑II project specific experiment runs were performed allowing for the assessment of the performance gain of these potential future capabilities. Also the potential impact of providing forecasts with hourly output resolution compared to three-hourly resolved forecasts is investigated. The inclusion of the new aerosol climatology in October 2003 improved both the GHI and DNI forecasts remarkably, while the change towards a new radiation scheme in 2007 only had minor and partly even unfavourable impacts on the performance indicators. For GHI, larger RMSE (root mean square error) values are found for broken/overcast conditions than for scattered cloud fields. For DNI, the findings are opposite with larger RMSE values for scattered clouds compared to overcast/broken cloud situations. The introduction of direct irradiances as an output parameter in the operational IFS version has not resulted in a general performance improvement with respect to biases and RMSE compared to the widely used Skartveit et al. (1998) global to direct irradiance conversion scheme. Cloudy situations and especially thin ice cloud cases are forecasted much better with respect to biases and RMSE, but large biases are introduced in clear sky cases. When applying the MACC aerosol scheme to include aerosol direct effects, an improvement especially in DNI biases is found for cloud free cases as expected. However, a performance decrease is found for water cloud cases. It is assumed that this is caused by the lack of an explicit modelling of cloud-aerosol interactions, while other meteorological forcings for cloud processes like the temperature field are modified by the aerosols.

The formation and decay of excited states of light‐harvesting bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) molecules and primary charge separation in reaction centres (RCs) of pigment‐protein complex B890 of the purple bacterium Chromatium minutissimum were studied as a function of excitation wavelength by means of picosecond absorbance difference spectroscopy. Selective excitation in the RC absorption band (at 800 nm) induced rapid bleaching of the absorption band of the RC BChl dimer (τ ∼ 1 ps) without absorption changes due to excited light‐harvesting BChl. It is concluded that excitation energy transfer from the BChl dimer of the RC to light‐harvesting BChl molecules is considerably slower than RC charge separation. Therefore, energy transfer from the light‐harvesting antenna to the RC in bacterial photosynthesis may be described as a ‘migration‐limited model’.

A new sizing approach is applied in this paper to stand-alone PV systems design, which is based on systems configurations without shedding load. The investigation is based on a detailed study of the minimum storage requirement and an analysis of the sizing curves. The analysis reveals the importance of using daily series of measured solar radiation data instead of monthly average values. For high-reliability systems, it is important that these data series are as long as possible, while the configuration of large generator and small battery seems to deal better with the unpredictability of solar radiation.