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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.

Telecommunication is a prerequisite for the Smart Grid. Several technologies are available on the market, but there is not a general agreement about which of them, or combination of them, that can enable most of the services for the distribution grid automation. The paper describes the approach of 7th Framework Program European Project INTEGRIS which relies on the hypothesis that there is not a single technology with an optimal trade-off between cost of investment and performances for all use cases and topologies of a distribution grid. It rather suggests to mesh several technologies (with focus on the Broadband Power Line, the Wi-Fi and the Fiber Optics) to cover all the segment of the distribution grid. This concept has been experimentally validated in two field demonstrators in Italy and in Spain. This paper presents the results of tests on the latency and the throughput.

To effectively address the sustainability crises our planet faces, decision-makers at different levels of government worldwide will have to get a handle on three key challenges: learning from Global North and South initiatives in tandem, taking stock of social innovations alongside technological fixes, and nurturing grassroots sustainable development initiatives next to, or in place of, top-down corporate and government interventions. Current scientific literature and grant-making institutions have often reinforced the compartmentalized fashion in which we learn and draw policy lessons from North/South, social/technical, and bottom-up/top-down sustainability initiatives, including local food system innovations. The strategic levers for global sustainable development lying in-between are thus left out. This paper uses exploratory, multiple case study analysis to address this omission. By concurrently drawing lessons from grassroots innovations in Brazil, New York, and Senegal—three profoundly different socioeconomic and geographic contexts—we identify common pressure points that have enabled local communities to drive system-wide transformations toward climate adaptation, resilience, and sustainability in the agri-food system. The findings of this paper would be of value to scholars, government officials, and community groups engaged in agri-food systems sustainability and interested in the processes of change that have allowed budding innovations to stabilize and scale up.

This dataset holds information on data and methods for the Melvin et al., 2016 publication entitled Climate change damages to Alaska public infrastructure and the economics of proactive adaptation. The abstract for this paper is as follows: Climate change in the circumpolar region is causing dramatic environmental change that is increasing the vulnerability of infrastructure. We quantified the economic impacts of climate change on Alaska public infrastructure under relatively high and low climate forcing scenarios [representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and RCP4.5] using an infrastructure model modified to account for unique climate impacts at northern latitudes, including near-surface permafrost thaw. Additionally, we evaluated how proactive adaptation influenced economic impacts on select infrastructure types and developed first-order estimates of potential land losses associated with coastal erosion and lengthening of the coastal ice-free season for 12 communities. Cumulative estimated expenses from climate-related damage to infrastructure without adaptation measures (hereafter damages) from 2015 to 2099 totaled $5.5 billion (2015 dollars, 3% discount) for RCP8.5 and $4.2 billion for RCP4.5, suggesting that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could lessen damages by $1.3 billion this century. The distribution of damages varied across the state, with the largest damages projected for the interior and southcentral Alaska. The largest source of damages was road flooding caused by increased precipitation followed by damages to buildings associated with near-surface permafrost thaw. Smaller damages were observed for airports, railroads, and pipelines. Proactive adaptation reduced total projected cumulative expenditures to $2.9 billion for RCP8.5 and $2.3 billion for RCP4.5. For road flooding, adaptation provided an annual savings of 80–100% across four study eras. For nearly all infrastructure types and time periods evaluated, damages and adaptation costs were larger for RCP8.5 than RCP4.5. Estimated coastal erosion losses were also larger for RCP8.5.

To meet the increasing challenges on global warming and customer demands, the current hierarchical structure of electric power grid is undergoing a rapid change by focusing on high efficiency, reliability and flexibility. To address such challenges, the new concept of smart grid with a sophisticated communication infrastructure has emerged. While power grid systems are based on traditional information architectures at present, the evolving smart grid has a strong need on communication connections among a huge amount of distributed elements, such as generators, substations, monitoring sensors and customers. However, the power industry is facing dilemma that communication resources are limited due to the lack of wireless spectrum resources and the restrictions of wired applications. This paper firstly provides the architecture of the wide-area monitoring system for smart grid by applying a spectrum sensing and sharing technique of cognitive radio, based on an overview of the current communication technologies. Afterwards, the paper presents the feasible application of cognitive communication architecture on the existing power quality monitoring system by combining long-term and short-term monitoring approaches.

Energy availability in a country is of great importance to its economy and to raising and maintaining its standard of living. In 1994, the United States consumed more than 88 quadrillion Btu (quads) of energy and spent about $500 billion on fuels and electricity. Fortunately, the United States is well endowed with energy sources, notably fossil fuels, and possesses a considerable nuclear power industry. The United States also has significant renewable energy resources and already exploits much of its hydropower resources, which represent 10% of electricity production. Nevertheless, in 1994, the United States imported about 45% of the petroleum products it consumed, equivalent to about 17 quads of energy. This dependence on imported oil puts the country at risk of energy supply disruptions and oil price shocks. Previous oil shocks may have cost the country as much as $4 billion (in 1993 dollars) between 1973 and 1990. Moreover, the production and use of energy from fossil fuels are major sources of environmental damage. The corresponding situation in many parts of the world is more challenging. Developing countries are experiencing rapid growth in population, energy demand, and the environmental degradation that often results from industrial development. The near-term depletion of energy resources in response to this rapid growth runs counter to the concept of ''sustainable development''--development that meets the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Energy research and development (RD (2) protecting the environment by reducing the adverse environmental impacts associated with energy production, distribution, and use; (3) keeping America secure by reducing vulnerabilities to global energy market shocks; and (4) enhancing American competitiveness in a growing world energy market.

Abstract The vision of the ‘Smart Grid’ anticipates a distributed real-time embedded system that implements various monitoring and control functions. As the reliability of the power grid is critical to modern society, the software supporting the grid must support fault tolerance and resilience of the resulting cyber-physical system. This paper describes the fault-tolerance features of a software framework called Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid (RIAPS). The framework supports various mechanisms for fault detection and mitigation and works in concert with the applications that implement the grid-specific functions. The paper discusses the design philosophy for and the implementation of the fault tolerance features and presents an application example to show how it can be used to build highly resilient systems.

The proposed special issue (SI) has invited submissions related to renewable energy, energy storage, power converters and electric drive systems for electrified transportation and smart grid applications [...]

Abstract Given the need to reduce the CO2 emissions coming from the manufacturing sector, it is important, for planning purposes, to know which countries and which manufacturing sub-sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use. Using data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the authors estimate trends in global decoupling of energy use and manufacturing value added, compare energy-use intensity in six country groups and estimate the potential for reducing energy use and CO2 emissions under two scenarios and compare selected sub-sector energy intensity and estimate the potential for reducing energy use CO2 emissions. The comparison of energy intensities across country groups and among countries suggests that there still remains significant potential to reduce energy use and associated CO2 emissions. The analysis of four sub-sectors in developing and transition economies also shows similar but varied potential for reducing energy use and associated CO2 emissions.