• Energy Research
• 16. Peace & justice close
• Tsinghua University close

The transformation of old neighborhoods involves many important types of livelihood development projects, of which smart transformation is considered one of the most important tasks at present. The smart transformation of old neighborhoods provides an important means to promote sustainable development; however, enhancing the willingness of residents to participate is an important prerequisite for the smart transformation of old neighborhoods. Considering perceptive value acceptance theory and community ownership theory in the field of information management and sociology, we study the intention of residents in old communities to participate in intelligent transformation and its influence mechanisms. Our results show that willingness to participate in the smart renovation of old residential areas is positively affected by the perceived value of smart renovation and the sense of community attachment of residents. The sense of community plays an intermediary role in the relationship between perceived value and willingness to participate in smart renovation. At the same time, the perceived value of intelligent renovation of old residential areas and a sense of community have chain mediating effects between perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, perceived risk, perceived cost, and willingness to participate. This paper not only achieves theoretical expansion but also provides good support for accelerating the intelligent transformation of old communities in China.

Since a plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) fleet can behave like a storage system and earn extra money by participating in secondary frequency regulation (SFR), a proper method that coordinates all the PEVs within this fleet is required. This paper introduces a coordinated vehicle-to-grid (V2G) control method to enable a PEV aggregator to participate in SFR, where the aggregator only needs to broadcast a simple signal and the PEVs decide their own control commands by solving an optimization problem iteratively through peer-to-peer communication. Compared with centralized method, the computational and communicational burden are remarkably alleviated by the proposed method. The objective to maintain the availability of PEVs during participating in SFR is also carefully considered. The effectiveness of proposed method is demonstrated via numerical simulations of a V2G fleet.

This research particularly aims to investigate how trust and perceived risk influence citizens’ e-government adoption. The findings of the study reveal that citizens’ trust of the government (TOG) and trust of the internet (TOI) positively affect citizens’ e-government adoption (EGA); perceived risk (PR) is negatively associated with citizens’ EGA. Interestingly, this study also demonstrates the negative moderating effect of PR on the relationship between TOG and EGA, TOI and EGA. The results also indicate that performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), and facilitation conditions (FC) influence citizens’ EGA positively. Lastly, implications for practice and research are discussed.

Les promesses et les engagements des gouvernements des pays riches ont été pris lors du sommet de la COP26 à Glasgow, ravivant ainsi l'espoir des nations de relever le défi du changement climatique. Ainsi, l'étude examine la complémentarité du développement financier et des émissions de carbone, tout en tenant compte de l'influence conditionnelle de la bonne gouvernance sous trois indicateurs désagrégés – la gouvernance économique, institutionnelle et politique pour les économies des BRICS, de la MONNAIE et du G7. Tout d'abord, l'étude révèle que le développement financier en fonction de l'indicateur adopté a des effets mitigés sur les niveaux de pollution de l'environnement. Plus précisément, le développement financier déclenche l'effet de pollution le plus élevé via le crédit national au secteur privé par rapport aux investissements directs étrangers, tandis que l'indice de développement financier réduit la pollution environnementale. Deuxièmement, la gouvernance économique favorise la qualité de l'environnement en réduisant la pollution de l'environnement grâce à une réglementation de la qualité. Troisièmement, la gouvernance institutionnelle par le biais d'un État de droit plus faible induit la pollution, tandis que le contrôle de la corruption s'oppose aux niveaux de pollution. En outre, seule la voix de la responsabilité soutient l'effet d'atténuation de la pollution de la gouvernance politique. Sur une analyse comparative bloc à bloc, l'efficacité de la gouvernance favorise la pollution environnementale dans les trois blocs économiques, mais à des amplitudes différentes, tandis que la voix de la responsabilité n'exerce un impact souhaitable significatif sur la pollution que dans les pays du G7. Enfin, les énergies renouvelables et la libéralisation du commerce exercent respectivement une influence négative et positive sur la dégradation de l'environnement. En la cumbre de Glasgow COP26 se hicieron promesas y compromisos de los gobiernos de las naciones ricas, lo que rejuvenece la esperanza entre las naciones para enfrentar el desafío del cambio climático. Por lo tanto, el estudio examina la complementariedad del desarrollo financiero y las emisiones de carbono, al tiempo que tiene en cuenta la influencia condicional de la buena gobernanza bajo tres indicadores desagregados: gobernanza económica, institucional y política para las economías BRICS, MINT y G7. En primer lugar, el estudio revela que el desarrollo financiero en función del indicador adoptado tiene efectos mixtos en los niveles de contaminación ambiental. Específicamente, el desarrollo financiero desencadena el mayor efecto de contaminación a través del crédito interno al sector privado en comparación con las inversiones extranjeras directas, mientras que el índice de desarrollo financiero reduce la contaminación ambiental. En segundo lugar, la gobernanza económica promueve la calidad ambiental al reducir la contaminación ambiental a través de la regulación de la calidad. En tercer lugar, la gobernanza institucional a través de un estado de derecho más débil induce a la contaminación, mientras que el control de la corrupción antagoniza los niveles de contaminación. Además, solo la voz de la rendición de cuentas respalda el efecto mitigador de la contaminación de la gobernanza política. En un análisis comparativo de bloque a bloque, la efectividad de la gobernanza promueve la contaminación ambiental en los tres bloques económicos, aunque en diferentes magnitudes, mientras que la voz de la rendición de cuentas ejerce un impacto significativo deseable sobre la contaminación solo en los países del G7. Por último, la energía renovable y la liberalización del comercio ejercen una influencia negativa y positiva en la degradación ambiental, respectivamente. Pledges and commitments from governments of wealthy nations were made at the COP26 Glasgow summit, thereby rejuvenating hope among nations to confront the climate change challenge. Thus, the study examines the complementarity of financial development and carbon emissions, while accounting for the conditional influence of good governance under three disaggregated indicators – economic, institutional, and political governance for the BRICS, MINT, and the G7 economies. First, the study reveals that financial development depending on the adopted indicator has mixed effects on environmental pollution levels. Specifically, financial development triggers the highest pollution effect via domestic credit to the private sector compared to foreign direct investments, while financial development index reduces environmental pollution. Secondly, economic governance promotes environmental quality by reducing environmental pollution through quality regulation. Third, institutional governance through weaker rule of laws induces pollution, while the control of corruption antagonizes pollution levels. Furthermore, only the voice of accountability supports the pollution-mitigating effect of political governance. On a bloc-to-bloc comparative analysis, governance effectiveness promotes environmental pollution in all the three economic blocs albeit at different magnitudes while the voice of accountability exerts a significant desirable impact on pollution only in the G7 countries. Lastly, renewable energy and trade liberalization exerts a negative and positive influence on environmental degradation respectively. تم تقديم تعهدات والتزامات من حكومات الدول الغنية في قمة غلاسكو COP26، مما جدد الأمل بين الدول في مواجهة تحدي تغير المناخ. وبالتالي، تبحث الدراسة في التكامل بين التنمية المالية وانبعاثات الكربون، مع مراعاة التأثير المشروط للحوكمة الرشيدة في إطار ثلاثة مؤشرات مصنفة – الحوكمة الاقتصادية والمؤسسية والسياسية لاقتصادات بريكس ومينت ومجموعة السبع. أولاً، تكشف الدراسة أن التنمية المالية التي تعتمد على المؤشر المعتمد لها تأثيرات متباينة على مستويات التلوث البيئي. على وجه التحديد، تؤدي التنمية المالية إلى أعلى تأثير للتلوث عن طريق الائتمان المحلي للقطاع الخاص مقارنة بالاستثمارات الأجنبية المباشرة، في حين يقلل مؤشر التنمية المالية من التلوث البيئي. ثانياً، تعزز الحوكمة الاقتصادية الجودة البيئية من خلال الحد من التلوث البيئي من خلال تنظيم الجودة. ثالثًا، تؤدي الحوكمة المؤسسية من خلال ضعف سيادة القوانين إلى التلوث، في حين أن السيطرة على الفساد تستعدي مستويات التلوث. علاوة على ذلك، فإن صوت المساءلة وحده يدعم التأثير المخفف للتلوث للحكم السياسي. عند إجراء تحليل مقارن بين الكتلة والكتلة، تعزز فعالية الحوكمة التلوث البيئي في جميع الكتل الاقتصادية الثلاث وإن كان ذلك بأحجام مختلفة في حين أن صوت المساءلة له تأثير مرغوب كبير على التلوث فقط في بلدان مجموعة السبع. وأخيراً، تؤثر الطاقة المتجددة وتحرير التجارة تأثيراً سلبياً وإيجابياً على التدهور البيئي على التوالي.

Why do power sector reforms succeed and fail in democratic contexts? We conduct comparative case studies of these reforms in the largest 20 Indian states. These states have responded to India’s electricity generation, transmission, and distribution crises in different ways. Similar to conventional case studies, our research design has the virtue of allowing us to explore historical processes. However, having a large number of cases also enables us to consider multiple causal factors at the same time. Both the findings and non-findings speak to the broad debate on the possible causes of reform failure. We find support for hypotheses emphasizing electoral opportunism and the politics of interest group (organized labor, agricultural interests). In contrast, partisan cleavages do not seem to explain reform failure. These findings offer new insights into politically feasible reform strategies for India.

Residential and small commercial consumers could use distributed energy storage devices to reduce their electricity bills under variable electricity prices to integrate domestic photovoltaic generation, store excess energy produced, and participate in demand response. However, the high purchase price of these devices still limits their applications. This paper introduces an alternative form of distributed energy storage, cloud energy storage (CES), which is a shared pool of grid-scale energy storage resources that provides storage services to small consumers. The goal of this approach is to lower the cost of energy storage by exploiting the complementarity of consumers as well as economies of scale. This paper considers the investment and operating decisions of both the CES operator and the consumers to demonstrate the benefits of this form of storage. Numerical results based on load and electricity prices of residential consumers from Ireland show that CES can be profitable and that CES can benefit consumers by providing energy storage services at a lower cost.

There is a rapidly increasing demand for hydropower in China. However, little research has been conducted to systematically investigate the overall aspects of hydropower development risks. With support of the data collected from a fieldwork survey, this study reports the multiple facets of hydropower development risks in China as perceived by main project participants. All groups have a common view on the criticality of safety, and the groups also have their own priorities, i.e., resettlement of migrants, incompetence of subcontractors, project delay, inadequate or incorrect design, premature failure of facilities and ecological and environmental impacts are the key risks to clients, whereas quality of work, financial related risks, reputation, and claims and disputes are the main concerns to contractors. A case study of Three Gorges Project further demonstrates that, hydropower development risks can be effectively managed by encouraging joint efforts of all participants to achieve the goals on producing renewable energy, reducing emissions of CO2, and providing important social/economical benefits. Future hydropower development should emphasize the interactions between project delivery, environmental, and economical processes to reach appropriate trade-offs among involving stakeholders, by adequately considering the inter-relations between project participants' risks as well as hydropower project's externalities on a broad view.

Online car-hailing services (such as DiDi and Uber) are one of the typical sharing economy forms of transportation service in the digital era. Related public policies are expected to reduce the risk of online car-hailing and ensure the social sustainable development. However, the empirical evidence regarding the effect of relevant policy implementations is still scarce. This study takes an online car-hailing service in China as a research object to understand and evaluate the effect of implementing related policies. The risk related to an online car-hailing service is classified into three dimensions in this study, namely, institutional, economic and safety perspectives. The empirical results indicate that public policies have significant impacts on reducing conflicts and risk of shared transportation in China, especially the institutional risk. Furthermore, the effects of different policy factors differ for different risk types. Several insights of developing policies and regulations related to sustainable shared transportation in the digitalization era are also provided. The interaction between government authorities, private firms and citizens should be attached to great importance in policy design, which will consequently enhance the sustainable development in the transportation sector under sharing economy.

Abstract Bed microclimate can directly affect the thermal comfort of the human body. A study combining experiments and field measurements was conducted to determine the effects of bedding insulation and indoor air temperature on bedding temperature and thermal comfort. The experiments involved varying indoor air temperatures (14, 18, 22, and 26°C) and bedding system insulations (3.1, 3.7, and 4.4 clo). Six male college students participated in the experiments, and three of these also participated in the field study along with a further three to give a total of six participants in the field study. Six participants each completed 4 experiments of 3 hours duration for the experimental part of the study. The two-week field study was conducted in students’ respective dormitories, where measurements of bedding temperature and feedback on thermal perceptions were obtained. The experimental results indicated that the higher the bedding insulation and indoor air temperature were, the warmer the participants felt. Linear relationships were found between air temperature and bedding temperature, air temperature and skin temperature, and bedding temperature and thermal sensation vote. Different body parts, except for the head, shared similar sensitivities to the bedding temperature but have varying thermal requirements. The thermal neutral bedding temperature in the experiments was 31.1°C whereas that in the field study was 32.1°C. This difference could have arisen due to metabolic rates, anticipated control, and self-adaptive behaviors. Based on measured data, a comfort zone for bedding insulation and air temperature was developed to further investigate the sleeping environment and its impact on daily life.