• Energy Research
• 16. Peace & justice close

Abstract In this paper I present findings and insights from an empirical study of two case study solar farm developments from rural areas of the South West, UK. Drawing on a Habermasian theoretical frame, I examine local resident narratives that emerged through the local public sphere and how these formed discursive meanings that provided shared background social norms for residents towards the solar farm developments. The paper begins by operationalising Habermas's theoretical ideas for empirical research and situating the research within existing literature. The theoretical and methodological sections are followed by the examination of three local narratives that emerged: idealised rural land use, farming and income generation, and money making and the pursuit of profit. Such narratives are considered in view of public opportunities for robust dialogue and debate to judge the normative democratic character of the solar farm developments. The paper concludes that the community development offered significantly more discursive space for debate than the commercial development and increased the developments' overall democratic legitimacy. It is maintained that such a Habermasian theoretical frame adapted for empirical analysis is valuable for normatively assessing democratic processes which are needed in view of conceptually weak accounts of ‘energy democracy’.

AbstractThe concept of a ‘just transition’ to a low‐carbon economy is firmly embedded in mainstream global discourses about mitigating climate change. Drawing on Karl Polanyi's political economy elaborated inThe Great Transformation, we interrogate the idea of a just transition and place it within its historical context. We address a major contradiction at the core of global energy transition debates: the rapid shift to low‐carbon energy‐systems will require increased extraction of minerals and metals. In doing so, we argue that extractive industries are energy and carbon‐intensive, and will enlarge and intensify social and ecological injustice. Our findings reveal the importance of understanding how the idea of a just transition is used, and by who, and the type of justice that underpins this concept. We demonstrate the need to ground just transition policies and programmes in a notion of justice as fairness.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the success of real estate crowdfunding projects in Spain. This type of crowdfunding invests in real estate assets. We analyzed 60 projects published on the Housers platform, a kind of participative platform that uses the lending and equity crowdfunding modalities. These projects have involved around 36,623 investment decisions and have raised a total amount of almost 26 million euros. The empirical analysis is based on ordinary least squares and negative binomial regression. Our main findings reveal that success differs depending on the type of project; in fact, buy-to-sell projects are less successful than development loan projects. In addition, while total return has a positive impact on project success, in the case of risk level and project term, the impact is negative.

Abstract An experimental study is conducted to investigate the melting and solidification processes of paraffin wax as a phase change material (PCM) in horizontal double pipe heat latent heat storage unit. The present work on phase change process includes study of temperature variations along the axial distances in PCM, determination of heat transfer coefficient as well as the heat flow rate. A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the effect of increasing the inlet temperature and the mass flow rate of the heat transfer fluid (HTF) both on the charging and discharging processes of the PCM. The experimental results show that the PCM melts and solidifies congruently, and the melting front moves from the left to right side of the PCM container whereas the solidification front moves from right to the left along the axial distances in the PCM container. The results indicate that natural convection dominates the melting process in the liquid phase due to buoyancy effects. On the other hand, the solidification process is dominated by conduction. The flow rate and inlet temperature of the HTF in the experiment range has a significant effect on the phase change processes. The results also indicate that the heat transfer coefficient between the HTF and the PCM was affected by the Reynolds number more during the melting process than during the solidification process. Heat flow rate during the melting and solidification process increased by 25% and 11%, respectively, in the case of increase or decrease by 2 °C of the inlet HTF temperature. The results of this study show that by increasing the inlet water temperature from 70 °C to 74 °C, total melting time can be decreased by 31%.

Abstract The albedo of a roof determines the fraction of incoming sunlight that is reflected, which affects heat transfer into the building and exchange of energy between the built environment and the atmosphere. While the albedo of individual roofs can be easily measured, roof albedo at the city scale is unknown. In this paper we characterize the albedos of roofs in seven cities in California: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Bakersfield, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. The fraction of urban area covered by roofs ranged by city from 10% to 25%. City-wide average roof albedo ranged from 0.17 ± 0.08 to 0.20 ± 0.11 (mean ± standard deviation) for five of the cities; values were higher in Sacramento (0.24 ± 0.11) and San Diego (0.29 ± 0.15). Buildings with small roofs were found to constitute a large fraction of city roof area and to have low mean albedos. This suggests that efforts to increase urban albedo through the use of reflective roofs should include small roofs, which are presumably mostly residential. Roof albedos derived for Bakersfield were used in a regional climate model (Weather Research and Forecasting Model) to estimate temperature changes attainable by converting the current stock of roofs to “cool” high albedo roofs. It was found that seasonal mean afternoon (15:00 LST) temperatures could be reduced by up to 0.2 °C during both the summer and winter. Changes in precipitation were not significant at the 95% confidence level.

The sustainability of ecotourism initiatives represents a major challenge. The aim of this study is to enhance our understanding of how community participation in ecotourism management can contribute toward achieving more sustainable results by identifying key factors that make it possible to potentiate a broader range of economic, social and environmental objectives. Based on the theory of collaborative planning and the strategic focus of community tourism, our work adopted a mixed approach to compare and explain the differences between two local cooperatives on the coast of the state of Nayarit, Mexico. The results reveal statistically‑significant differences between the benefits obtained through ecotourism and identify the factors that foment active community participation by local residents that, in turn, generates positive correlations with those benefits. Findings were supported by qualitative interviews with external informants. Our conclusion is that the level of benefits obtained can be reasonably explained by a set of six key factors

DC Power Flow Model is a constant matrix, a non-iterative model which is built into DC Optimal Power Flow Model for market clearing and settlement of real power market. DC Optimal Power Flow Method is fast when compared to nonlinear Optimal Power Flow and the accuracy level is acceptable for security analysis. It is widely used for active power flow analysis in the deregulated power system. As of now, there are few papers available in DC Optimal Power Flow Model for reactive power flow analysis. This paper proposes a new Optimal Q Flow (OQF) method for market clearing and settlement of pure reactive power market. A lumped linear model is proposed for power balance equality constraint for fast convergence. In this method, a unique reference for delivery/withdrawal point for reactive power called Market Center is proposed to share the total transmission loss equitably between the GENCO and DISCO participants in a transparent manner for pure Q Market using incremental loss factor method. This model uses a slack bus independent loss factors measured with respect to “Market Center”. The objective function is to minimize the cost of the reactive power payable to GENCOs with respect to the market center. The compensation received by GENCO participants and Locational Marginal Price to be paid by DISCOs participants are derived for N bus. The OQF method is tested on a Radial Five Bus System, Ward and Hale 6 Bus System and IEEE 30 Bus System.The bus voltage magnitude computed using the Iterative Q Flow method is accurate and obtained for a mismatch tolerance of 0.1 MVAr. In the proposed method it is found that the total bus loss is reduced considerably thereby minimizing the cost of the objective function. Keywords: Iterative Q flow, Market center, Incremental loss factor, Loss allocation, Linear programming, Market clearing and settlement

Introduction. The problem of Ukraine's economic development in modern conditions is directly related to the implementation of the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement, so the national economy is facing new opportunities and challenges, including the lack of effective mechanisms to restrict timber exports. The research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the export bans to the EU. Aim and tasks. The aim of the paper is to study the mechanisms of regulation of the timber market and their export to the EU. Results. The impact of the imposed moratorium on the declared goals is analyzed in the paper. Analyzed statistics show no effect moratorium on the reduction of deforestation and halt exports of unprocessed timber. It is also impossible to make a clear conclusion about the positive impact of the moratorium on the supply of raw materials of domestic enterprises woodworking and furniture industries. However, within the structure of Ukrainian exports, the share of products of woodworking and furniture industries has increased. This was due to the reduction of Ukrainian export volumes against the background of increasing the share of exports of timber and wood products, as well as the resumption of sales of the furniture industry. Conclusions. A study of the ban on raw wood showed that in general, the effect of the moratorium imposed is not obvious, since the number of woodworking enterprises has increased and the level of employment in these sectors has increased. Ukraine requires the adoption of a comprehensive targeted program that would combine measures to develop both the woodworking and forest industries. The national interest of Ukraine is the preservation and restoration of forests, and the moratorium introduced is an example of how partial, fragmentary unsystematic decisions are made. The practical significance of the results allows to analyze existing and find new alternative export balance, ensuring equal opportunities and non-discrimination between domestic and European Union market.