Obsolete solar panels recycling and economic growth

Balancing urban energy considering economic growth and environmental sustainability through integration of renewable energy

The rapid increment in human population and economy growth had led to the rise of the energy demand globally. With the rapid diminishing fossil fuels based energy sources, renewable energy sources had been introduced due to its unlimited availability especially solar energy which is a sustainable and reliable energy. This research was conducted to study and compare the efficiency of the single axis tracking solar panel with a 40° inclined angle solar panel in sunny weather condition. The results indicated that the output generated by the solar panel was directly affected by the angle which the solar panel facing the sun. In terms of performance the single axis tracking solar panel emerged to be more efficient with greater energy generated.

Social issues in the energy transition: Effect on the design of the new power system

Techno-economic assessment of application of solar PV in building sector

The ambitious “green” industrial policy program promoted by the Biden administration is designed to consolidate the US claims to its leading role in shaping the global climate change agenda. The package of legislative acts approved by the White House provides for unprecedented allocations to address priorities for decarbonizing the American economy. Pumping up targeted manufacturing industries with federal subsidies and tax incentives has generally had a positive impact on economic growth, employment, labor productivity and innovation activity. After the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), the process of transforming alternative energy into the fastest growing and relatively affordable source of electricity attractive for private investment accelerated. Large-scale investments of public and private funds in renewable energy sources, electric transport and batteries have stimulated the use of national resources. At the same time, the task set by the White House to achieve sole global leadership and weaken the dependence of national industry on supplies of raw materials, components and finished products from “unfriendly” countries still looks elusive. The most significant obstacle to meeting Washington’s overstated ambitions in terms of increasing the chances of American companies competing with China is the continuing lag in building up the production base of “green” energy. The US dependence on supplies of the “green triad” – solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles remains high. Washington’s aggressive protectionist actions have failed to prevent Chinese companies from developing alternative energy sources, as well as the new energy vehicle industry (NEVs). The confrontation with China distracts the material resources of the United States from the tasks related to the implementation of the “new green deal”, creates obstacles to the scaling of “green” technologies. If the Biden administration or his successor as US president act even more aggressively, it will make it more difficult to achieve Washington’s climate goals, may involve some US allies in a “subsidy war” and may even serve as a trigger for a new escalation of international tensions.

Energy sources are crucial for the development and growth of economies and civilizations. Solar energy is an alternative energy to generate electrical power. The challenges of solar photovoltaic panels (PV) are the low output power and efficiency and the huge installation area beside PVs need a tracking system for better efficiency. The motivation of this paper is to design an innovative solar sphere system, which is a new concentrated photovoltaic technology that has better performance (efficiency and output power) than the normal conventional solar panel (PV) with a smaller installation area and without any tracking system. This design consists of an acrylic solar sphere entirely filled with cooking oil (sunflower or corn oil) that captures solar radiation and concentrates it on a focal point. The focal point is adjusted over a multi-junction cell that acts as a collector device (concentrator solar cell). This focused solar energy can generate a massive amount of power, which is used to produce more electricity than normal photovoltaic panels. The experiments were carried out in order to discover the best acrylic models or shape designs, which is the sphere, the best materials or media in the sphere, that is oil, the best sphere’s size and volume, and that is larger, the best sphere thickness, which at first is lower, the best fluid oil type, which is cooking oil, and finally the best fluid amount or volume inside the sphere, and this is the entire volume. Then, these factors mentioned above are compared with normal photovoltaics (PV) that have the same section area as these shapes. The results revealed that these factors have significant effects on the output power value and efficiency. It has been demonstrated that our innovative concentrated solar sphere system can produce nearly four times the output power or electricity greater than that of a conventional solar panel PV with the same cross-sectional area. This specific sort of compression is crucial because it shows that less space is required to establish this system than it would to install conventional solar panels. The performance of the system per unit of the square area it occupies was compared to the latest generation of flat panel PV available at the market performance; hence, the installation space will be decreased by 40% to 60%. Our system has about twice as much efficiency as solar PV and does not require a tracking system and maintenance. Our technology also has the benefit of not being impacted by extreme temperatures, clouds, dust, and humidity.

Northern Nigeria is one of the most recognizable areas, having vast amounts of solar radiation and rapidly growing populations. Thus, there is an opportunistic aspect of the use of solar power in this region. Since this region enjoys all-year sunshine, it is one of the best places for the integration of solar energy. With huge problems of energy she presently faces such as irregular supply of electricity, people's growth and thus demand, solar power presents an immediate usable, reliable, and sustainable solution. The energy demand in northern Nigeria is expected to sharply increase from about 48 billion kWh in 2024 to 64.5 billion kWh by 2034. This escalated energy requirement directly puts a demand for an efficient and sustainable source of energy, and as such, the promise of steady and renewable energy supply through solar power makes it very appealing. The average regional solar radiation exceeds 6 kWh/m2 per day, which points towards a very vast potential for solar energy generation. But to meet the energy requirements that will arise in the future from solar, it would call for a tremendous investment in infrastructure. This is because it is estimated that approximately 246,000 km2 of solar panels might be needed by 2034 in order to be able to cover the energy needs of the country. However, this massive area is required, but the benefits of solar energy do not stop there at solving shortages of energy. Solar power would increase economic activities due to job creation, stimulation of local industries, and the end reliance on fossil fuels. It has implications on environmental sustainability as it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and promotes cleaner practices of energy consumption. Northern Nigeria will unlock a stable and reliable source of power through investment in this infrastructure. This is important for economic development, thereby eventually improving the quality of life. Indeed, the integration of solar power addresses the immediate needs of satisfying energy challenges but builds a foundation for sustainable growth and environmental stewardship over the long term. Solar power in northern Nigeria is important for ensuring future demands for energy and significant economic development while emphasizing sustainability within the environment. A lot still has to be tapped into by tapping into the solar resources that are available. Key words: Solar Energy,Sustainability,Economic Growth,Energy Demand,Renewable Resources

Excessive exploitation of natural resources has an environmental impact on ecosystems due to demographic and economic growth, and energy demand. For this reason, world economies have been implementing policy tools to achieve eco-friendly energy growth, minimizing environmental impact. It is necessary to increase Renewable Energies (RE) fraction in terms of electricity supply, improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption in greenhouses as well as in the agricultural sector. Thus, the European Green Deal (EGD) is a sustainable package of measures which, due to the ecological use of natural resources, strengthens the resilience of European food systems. The EGD’s objectives include: ensuring food security, reducing environmental impact, and supporting the farm to fork strategy and energy communities. The aim of this review is to present innovative energy technologies integrated with agrivoltaic systems to produce and utilize energy with eco-friendly methods. In this review, agrivoltaic systems were presented in the EGD perspective, since, as shown by several studies, they increase simultaneously clean energy production and crop yield, avoiding limitations in land use. As agrivoltaic systems produce energy by the installation of PV panels, an overview of PV technology was provided. PV panels can feed electricity to the power grid. Nowadays, since there are many impoverished rural areas which do not have access to electricity, a lot of projects have been developed that utilize power generation from microgrids combined with hybrid systems (e.g., wind and solar energy) to feed agricultural facilities or community buildings.

This study provides a technical and financial analysis of the viability of producing green hydrogen and electrifying railway platforms at Hatia locations in India using solar energy and pumped hydro storage backup. The present study examines Hatia Railway Station's switch to green energy, highlighting the advantages and prospects it offers. Through the utilization of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, the area may reduce greenhouse gas emissions, meet national climate objectives, and improve air quality. The solar potential of the area offers a strong basis for the generation of sustainable energy, reinforced by cutting-edge technology. Furthermore, creating green energy infrastructure has the potential to boost employment and economic growth, which would improve the community. The total energy produced by the PV panel is 2,266,982 kWh.

Energy is the key factor for the growth of any nation; it is important to analyze the true potential of energy. Worldwide societies are searching options for sustainable development. Recently solar energy has contributed a lot in the renewable energy; Sun light is available in abundant amount at maximum places on the globe. Solar Photovoltaic Systems are used to convert sun light in to electricity, which are static generators require least maintenance. It is estimated that 70% of the world total energy consumption can be provided from renewable; hence renewable energy is a choice for sustainable development and economic growth. The performance of Solar Photovoltaic Systems is site dependent, manufacture indicate the efficiency of conversion in STC (1000W/m2, 25 oC, A.M. = 1.5) at the back side of the module. Although many researchers have contributed in the area of performance improvement of solar PV Systems since last three decades, however yet it is difficult to generalize the performance considering different parameters like irradiance, ambient temperature and wind velocity. Generally natural wind speed effect is omitted, which leads to significant amount of energy neglected at windy locations. Earlier solar PV systems were of small ratings but now days; these systems are installed in large ratings. Thus true potential is not estimated by project planners hence over estimation of system size and long payback period is observed. In present work it is tried to analyze experimentally that up to what extent, wind velocity can reduce the thermal losses. During experiment it is observed that for average good wind speed 2–4 m/s even at low irradiance, Solar PV systems could be as efficient as that in STC because temperature losses can be brought down below 5% by natural wind cooling.

Introduction to Focus:Environmental Humanities Ursula K. Heise, Focus Editor (bio) and Allison Carruth, Focus Editor (bio) From pollution and nuclear energy to deforestation and global warming, environmental issues play an ever more dominant role in our daily news cycles. The conflicts these issues generate at times revolve around the familiar lines of wilderness conservation, social justice, and economic growth that environmentalist thought has foregrounded for decades. The spring 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform—and the discourse the spill has fueled—pits a transnational corporation against local residents and a delicate marine ecosystem with complex and devastating consequences: a scenario well-known not only from other oil disasters such as the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, the Prestige off the Galician coast, or the multiple large-scale spills in the Niger Delta, but also from other industrial accidents and catastrophes ranging from Minamata, Seveso, and Love Canal to Bhopal, Times Beach, and Chernobyl. But other conflicts over natural resources, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture unsettle the very meaning and aims of environmentalism. The contested construction of a major solar energy facility in California's Panoche Valley, for example, is difficult to parse in terms of environmentalist and anti-environmentalist projects. In this somewhat remote but by no means pristine valley—which has served as ranchland for decades and is home to a grassland ecosystem but also oil fields and a large asbestos-contaminated site—the company Solargen plans to build a facility comprised of 1.2 million solar panels that would provide more than 300,000 homes with renewable energy. The proposal responds to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's mandate that California derive 33 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, and given the urgency to shift away from coal and oil power due to their impact on climate change, Solargen's ambitious plan would seem like one environmentalists would find hard to resist. But local farmers as well as conservationists from organizations like the Audubon Society are protesting the solar facility, voicing concerns over increased traffic and pollution, the development of open land, and the alteration of animal habitats that might endanger rare species. While these concerns are all in themselves classic environmentalist ones, the central conflict here emerges not from the clash between industry and nature lovers, between economic and ecological values, or between exploitation and conservation, but from rifts over how to prioritize goals that are all, at bottom, environmentalist. Recent work in the Environmental Humanities—in such fields as environmental history, ecocriticism, and environmental philosophy—engages with this thorny sociopolitical, legal, and cultural landscape in which the old environmentalist struggles rage on even as new ones arise from the combined impact of greater public awareness, the diversification of the environmentalist movement itself, and the global reach of environmental problems. Environmentally oriented research in the Humanities, a selection of which we are reviewing here, has long functioned as complement to and critique of the political rhetoric of environmentalism. Scholars who undertake this research are often themselves impassioned conservationists committed to finding sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment and interacting with the natural world; yet these same scholars are just as often skeptical vis-à-vis the narratives, metaphors, and dichotomies that have structured much environmentalist thought since the 1960s. Environmental historians such as Donald Worster, William Cronon, and Richard White, for example, have emphasized that the conservationist commitment to purportedly untouched landscapes ignores long histories of human inhabitation as well as the oppressive political ideologies that enabled the removal of indigenous populations and attendant myth of "pristine wilderness." Ecofeminists such as Annette Kolodny, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, and Stacy Alaimo have highlighted how Western environmentalism, by representing the typical encounter with nature as that of a lone male surviving in the wilderness, has perpetuated patriarchal ideologies. Literary ecocritics have interrogated the environmentalist use of genres such as pastoral and apocalypse to structure verbal as well as visual stories about the decline of nature under the impact of human—and particularly modern—society. The Environmental Humanities, then, are situated at a site of double struggle—against the concepts and stories that have enabled environmental degradation in...

In the present book under review, the reader will have an opportunity to study and understand Australia’s different energy sectors. The reader will update him/herself with the technical, environmental, and economical aspects of energy production. The book’s novelty is in its discussion of the sustainability of different energy sources, ranging from non-renewable to renewable energy sources. The book “Energy in Australia – Peak Oil, Solar Power, and Asia’s Economic Growth” has been written in six chapters. The book is helpful for readers interested to learn about energy development in Australia. Students eager to learn about the economics of energy productions and the environmental impacts of energy production could also benefit from this book. The book includes a comprehensive energy analysis of rooftop solar systems along with its integration within modern electricity grid. The author provides technical depth to understand life-cycle boundaries and uses such parameters to perform energy efficient calculations for solar power in Australia. The book discusses how Australia is dependent on coal-fired electricity grids for homes despite of the fact that many homes in Australia have their own solar power systems. The author introduces the knowledge of photovoltaics (PV) in the context of modern electricity systems. The book explores the potential solar PV for Australia, since the country has unlimited sunshine throughout the year and has a modern electricity grid system. The key areas where the book focuses are solar power, rooftop solar systems, electricity system issues, energy production, utilization, and storage and more importantly, it discusses grid integration. These issues are addressed in six chapters. Chapter 1 – “Introduction: One Million Solar Systems” presents a theoretical background behind the aims and objectives of producing this work. It highlights the need of performing life-cycle analyses and a study of energy return on investment (EROI) of using solar panels in Australian homes – the quantity of which has passed one million in March 2013. Chapter 2 – “Quarry Australia: Building Australia on Coal” discusses the use of coal in Australia as an energy source. It discusses some pros and cons of using coal as an energy source. The chapter discusses major Australian coal based projects and highlights their economics. It also lists some of the major customers of Australian coal. Chapter 3 – “Toward Optimized Complexity: Integrating Intermittency” provides knowledge of using 100% renewable energy to meet Australian energy requirements. In particular, it focuses on electricity production and its use. This chapter also discusses the energy efficient processes in Melbourne, Denmark, Germany, and Spain and discusses their compactness over the technologies, which are utilized in developing such systems. Chapter 4 – In “Electricity Networks: Managing Peak Demand,” the author discusses the demand and supply of electricity at different working hours and the various factors, which effect the electricity generation. The chapter is an amalgam of knowledge about using wind as well as large-scale solar systems to meet the electricity demand. Chapter 5 – “EROI of Solar PV” is what I consider the “heart” of the book. It discusses one of the most important factors, examining the sustainability of an energy source, the life-cycle study. The chapter discusses life-cycle assessment (LCA) of energy sources. It also develops the ways to quantify renewable energy efficiency. The chapter discusses EROI as a measurement tool. In this chapter, the author presents various case studies of energy utilization in different regions of Australia and evaluates those case studies using the LCA parameter. Palmer study is unique; in that it discusses the process inputs and outputs. Moreover, the economics of such processes accompanies with environmental studies. The last chapter “Driving Down Emissions: The Role of Carbon Pricing” discusses one of the most important topics in today’s renewable research – carbon pricing. Carbon pricing is essentially a concept introduced by Australia and has triggered a debate to have a monetary incentive

Purpose In 2023, Saudi Arabia led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) trade in low-carbon technology (TLCT), exporting over $1.2 billion in solar panels and technologies. Its focus on TLCT trade drives regional sustainability and economic growth, solidifying its role as the GCC's hub for sustainable trade. Design/methodology/approach The current study uses a modified gravity model to assess the bilateral TLCT between Saudi Arabia and its trading partners of the GCC. The model uses economic size (mass) as the numerator and carbon emissions ratio as the denominator, replacing the traditional distance variable to account for environmental disparities as trade barriers. Cross-section non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model estimates are used to estimate the modified gravity model. Findings The estimates reveal that Saudi Arabia's economic size positively impacts TLCT in both the short and long run, while negative shocks reduce the trade. Similarly, the increase in economic size of trading partners enhances TLCT volumes and vice versa. The higher carbon emissions ratio indicates more emissions in Saudi Arabia relative to its partners, hindering the LCT trade, while a lower ratio facilitates trade by reducing environmental trade barriers. Originality/value The current study presents novel and distinct contributions to the literature on trade and sustainability. First, it estimates the dynamics of TLCT that have been underexplored in empirical modelling. Second, it modifies the traditional gravity model of trade by introducing the emissions gap as a trade barrier, thereby integrating environmental performance with TLCT. Third, it applies a non-linear modelling approach to capture asymmetric oscillations in the effects of economic size and the emissions gap on TLCT. Highlights

Poverty is one of the most vital issues negatively impacting livelihoods in South Africa. Central to addressing basic human needs towards poverty eradication lies the provision of renewable energy (Chen, 2024). Poverty can be addressed through access to energy sources that are modern, clean, and affordable (Lu et al., 2023). Energy is relevant for addressing fundamental human needs and is a prerequisite for economic growth. The study investigated the extent to which a move towards clean energy for poor communities contributed towards poverty reduction in an urban context. The study was carried out in two phases using a mixed-method research design. Phase 2 was a qualitative study based on information gathered from in-depth interviews, while Phase 1 was a quantitative study that included an online survey. According to the study’s findings, the adoption of renewable energy technologies in Soweto township, will contribute to a decrease in poverty, improve the socio-economic status of citizens, enhance economic growth, and save the environment. To achieve poverty reduction, the researchers concluded that, the government should provide the citizens with affordable renewable energy equipment, such as solar panels to those that are regarded as poor and provide incentives to those that install solar panels in their household.

Multiattribute decision‐making (MADM) approach is an effective method for handling ambiguous information in a practical situation. The process of the MADM technique has drawn a lot of interest from various academic and selection processes of extensive analysis. The aggregation operators (AOs) are the best mathematical tools and received a lot of attention from researchers. This article explored the theory of intuitionistic fuzzy IF sets (IFSs) and their certain fundamental operations. The theory of triangular norms also explores Aczel Alsina operations (AAOs) in advanced mathematical tools. The concepts of Heronian mean (HM) and geometric HM (GHM) operators are presented to define interrelationships among different opinions. We developed a list of certain AOs by utilizing AAOs under the system IF information, namely, IF Aczel Alsina HM (IFAAHM), IF Aczel Alsina weighted HM (IFAAWHM), IF Aczel Alsina GHM (IFAAGHM), and IF Aczel Alsina weighted GHM (IFAAWGHM) operators. Some particular characteristics of our invented methodologies are also presented. Solar energy is an effective, efficient resource to enhance electricity production and the country’s economic growth. Therefore, we studied an application of solar panel systems to solve real‐life problems under a robust technique of the MADM approach by utilizing our invented approaches of IFAAWHM and IFAAWGHM operators. A numerical example was also given to select more suitable solar panels under our proposed methodologies. To find the competitiveness and feasibility of discussed methodologies, we make an inclusive comparative study in which we contrast the results of existing AOs with the consequences of current approaches.