The effective and rational energy generation and supply is one of the main presumptions of sustainable development. Combined heat and power production, or co-generation, has clear environmental advantages by increasing energy efficiency and decreasing carbon emissions. However, higher investment...

The expected growth of living standard, number of inhabitants and development of technology, industry and agriculture will cause a significant increase of energy consumption in cities. Three scenarios of energy sector development until 2030 and corresponding energy consumption for the city of...

The important energy requirements for the desalination process impose especially in autonomous and decentralized plants supplied by Renewable Energy Sources (RES). In this paper, five alternative energy generation topologies of Reverse Osmosis desalination process are evaluated. The proposed...

In order to ensure the competitiveness, the innovation and the jobs in the industrial sector it is crucial to solve the problems concerning the secure, reliable and constant access to raw materials. In a world characterized by an able legislation, the resources’ efficiency on the global...

La Directiva Marco de Aguas, aprobada en el año 2000, obliga a todos los Estados miembros de la Unión Europea a introducir una política de precios del agua. Por ello se prevé que los subvencionados cánones y tarifas de riego pagados actualmente por superficie regada cambien por tarifas...

The Ecuadorian proposal to keep 846 million barrels of crude oil in the Yasuní National Park underground—for the purposes of avoiding CO2 emissions and to protect both the biological diversity and the indigenous peoples in isolation who inhabit this area of the Amazon—is evaluated from a...

Poor access to clean and reliable energy technologies is a major challenge to most developing countries. The decision to introduce new technologies is often faced by low adoption rates or even public opposition. In addition, the data required for effective decision making is often inadequate or...

For municipalities that have joined the Covenant of Mayors promoted by the European Commission, the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) represents a strategic tool for achieving the greenhouse gas reductions required by 2020. So far as the energy retrofit actions in their residential building...

Local governments have to take decisions in increasingly complex contexts. Among other decisions, in countries where it is permitted by the legal framework, local policymakers have to choose the type of management of local public services. The importance of the urban water service and the...

We demonstrate that stakeholder-oriented multi-criteria analysis (MCA) can adequately address a variety of sustainable development dilemmas in decision-making, especially when applied to complex project evaluations involving multiple objectives and multiple stakeholder groups. Such evaluations...