Studies on urban heat island (UHI) have been more than a century after the phenomenon was first discovered in the early 1800s. UHI emerges as the source of many urban environmental problems and exacerbates the living environment in cities. Under the challenges of increasing urbanization and...

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the current state of the art of the economics and socio-economics of ocean renewable energy (ORE); the many ways in which the viability and impacts of an ORE project are assessed, and an analysis of the current weaknesses, issues or inappropriateness...

The production of bioenergy from second generation (2G) feedstocks is being encouraged by legislation targeted at addressing a number of controversial issues including carbon emissions driven by land-use change and competition for crops used in food production. Here, we synthesise the...

The principal options for engineering Earth's ecological future can be concisely visualized in a conceptual dilemma matrix. Scaling of the matrix with real world data confirms the widening of Earth's sustainability gap, due to our increasing ecological footprint. The simplicity of the dilemma...

Several environmental rating methodologies are available worldwide to evaluate and compare the environmental performance of vehicles, which can be useful for consumers decisions and for organizations in the promotion of less pollutant technologies and fuels.

The currently developing concept of a Net Zero Energy Building introduces new challenges and research problems. The calculation of a net zero energy balance is heavily influenced by the energy carrier weighting factors that are chosen, which can deeply influence the future energy market towards...

Currently, energy systems are not fully sustainable due to the heavy power demands provoked by high population and increasing level of the living standard and economic growth. Hence, it requires significant efforts to conserve the resources and ensure the sustainability in energy demand and in...

Sensitivity analysis plays an important role in building energy analysis. It can be used to identify the key variables affecting building thermal performance from both energy simulation models and observational study. This paper is focused on the application of sensitivity analysis in the field...

The results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study can be affected by several uncertainty sources, mainly due to the methodological choices, the initial assumptions, i.e. allocation rules, system boundaries and impact assessment methods, and the quality of the available data. Then, the experts...

This study examines the feasibility of using a theoretical model and empirical analysis methods to value renewable energy (RE) investment from perspective of real option analysis (ROA). Based on use of a ROA approach, the RE value is evaluated with respect to its ability to conform to the main...